' 


PAGES 


FROM    THE 


ECCLESIASTICAL  HISTOKY 


OF 


NEW    ENGLAND 


DURING  THE  CENTURY  BETWEEN 


1740  AND  1840. 


BOSTON: 
JAMES  B.  DOW,    PUBLISHER. 

1847. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


These  Pages  originally  appeared  in  the  Episcopal  Ob- 
server. They  were  copied  into  other  periodicals;  and 
their  republication  in  the  present  form,  has  been  requested. 
The  design  with  which  they  were  written,  was  to  present  a 
historical  review,  rather  than  a  history.  Such  a  review 
must  contain  facts,  may  imply  opinions,  and  cannot  but  in- 
volve inferences.  The  facts  which  are  contained  in  these 
Pages  are  either  generally  familiar,  or  else  preserved  in 
printed  documents, —  numerous, —  though  often  ephemeral. 
The  opinions  which  are  implied,  relate  to  subjects  on  which 
no  Christian  can  desire  disguise.  The  inferences  which  are 
involved,  are  as  much  with  the  reader,  as  with  the  writer. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

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PAGES,    &C. 


CHAPTER   I. 

The  Reformation  tore  down  images  and  shrines 
within  the  temple  of  Christian  docirine  ;  but  it  left 
the  foundations,  the  walls  and  the  columns  as  they 
had  stood  through  the  revolutions  of  ages.  Still 
was  the  structure  cruciform  ;  a  triune  glory  was 
still  reflected  in  its  parts;  and  the  holiest  spot  was 
that  at  which  were  still  celebrated  the  mysteries 
that  commemorated  the  one  atoning  Sacrifice. 
The  rash  man  who  dared,  in  the  revival  of  primi- 
tive instructions,  to  find  and  follow  the  footsteps  of 
Pelagius,  of  Arius,  or  of  Paul  of  Samosata,  was 
not  safer  on  the  southern  bank  of  the  Tweed  than 
on  the  northern,  and  might  as  vainly  seek  a  shelter 
among  the  republicans  of  Geneva,  as  at  the  courts 
of  electors  or  emperors.  Amidst  the  wide  effer- 
vescence of  thought,  a  few  scattered  minds,  each 
in  its  own  manner,  assailed  the  common  faith  of 
the  reformed,  and  the  penalty  was  exacted.  The 
five  or  six  sufferers  under  Edward,  Elizabeth  and 
James,  had  blended  with  something  like  the  Arian 
opinion,  fantasies  which  would  have  effectually 
prevented  its  propagation  through  their  single- 
handed  labors.  Servetus,  an  itinerant  Spanish 
1 


D  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

physician,  if  he  b^re  not  about  the  insane  wreck  of 
a  fine  intellect,  must  have  been  at  least  a  Pan- 
theist. Gathered  from  several  countries,  a  com- 
pany of  exiles  established  themselves  in  Poland 
and  Transylvania;  and  the  Socini  left  them  a 
name.  Persecution  disturbed  their  flourishing  seats 
in  Poland ;  and  some  tens  of  thousands  of  Tran- 
sylvanians  were  the  only  body  on  the  European 
continent,  that  preserved  an  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tion and  denied  the  Trinity. 

"  The  father  of  English  Unitarianism,"  in  the 
language  of  a  distinguished  Unitarian,  was  John 
Biddle,  who  was  rejected  from  the  wide  toleration 
of  Cromwell,  and  after  the  Restoration  died  in  the 
prison  which  had  become  his  home.  His  spirit 
revived  in  Thomas  Emlyn,  a  dissenting  minister, 
who,  towards  the  end  of  that  century,  published 
his  Humble  Inquiry  into  the  Scripture  Account  of 
Jesus  Christ,  and  was  sentenced  to  an  ignominious 
punishment  at  Dublin.  Biddle,  however,  was  a 
Socinian ;  while  Emlyn  seemed  to  ascribe  to  the 
Saviour  the  throne  which  Arius  had  allowed, 
above  angels  and  archangels.  The  bold  and  pe- 
culiar mind  of  Milton  had  chosen  a  path  of  its 
own,  and,  giving  to  the  Son  of  God  every  honor 
except  that  of  eternal  generation  and  consubstan- 
tial  equality  with  the  Father,  adored  and  accepted 
the  vicarious  propitiation.  A  cool,  cautious  and 
negative  strain  of  thought  drew  upon  Locke  the 
reproach,  as  it  was  deemed  by  himself,  of  Socin- 
ianism  ;  but  the  claim  of  those  who  have  loved  to 
number  him  with  Newton,  amongst  their  more 
secret  precursors,  is  compelled,  as  with  Newton,  to 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  7 

seek  its  sanctions  from  his  silence  or  his  less  une- 
quivocal language.  The  great  Dr.  Clarke  paused 
where  his  conscience  would  still  permit  the  wor- 
ship of  the  English  church;  while  Whiston, 
earnest,  eccentric,  learned,  intrepid,  threw  himself 
back  upon  what  he  deemed  an  Arianism  earlier 
than  Arius. 

Freedom  from  ecclesiastical  restraint  was  the 
inheritance  of  the  children  of  nonconformists. 
While  civil  liberty  was  attaining  its  full  stature 
under  the  house  of  Brunswick,  a  spirit  of  unawed 
investigation  asserted  its  rights  in  the  domain  of 
religious  knowledge.  Early  in  the  reign  of  George 
the  First,  two  or  three  of  the  most  eminent  dis- 
senting ministers  in  Devonshire  were  charged  with 
the  Arian  error.  The  defection  proved  more  ex- 
tensive :  —  a  stormy  tumult  agitated  the  whole 
body  of  nonconformists ;  the  offending  teachers 
were  at  length  expelled  from  their  meeting-houses ; 
and  the  general  assembly  at  Salters'  Hall  con- 
demned their  doctrine.  But  the  effect  of  the  decis- 
ion was  counterbalanced  by  the  refusal  of  a  large, 
a  respectable  and  generally  an  orthodox  portion  of 
that  assembly,  to  throw  their  own  belief  into  any 
form  of  words  which  had  not  been  copied  from  the 
Scriptures.  It  became  settled  in  many  minds,  as 
a  part  of  the  freedom  of  dissent,  that  no  other  creed 
should  raise  its  battlement  against  heresy,  above 
the  rampart  of  the  Bible  ;  and  the  popular  attach- 
ment to  the  religious  liberty  which  had  been  so 
late  and  so  hardly  won,  and  the  popular  prejudice 
against  bigotry,  a  prejudice   so  peculiarly  popular 


8  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

In  times  of  spreading  intelligence,  were  allured  to 
the  side  of  innovation.  The  cause  of  freedom  it- 
self was  naturally  associated  with  the  cause  which 
claimed  protection  from  the  cegis  of  that  freedom. 

In  the  mean  time,  the  human  mind,  pushing  its 
inquiries  in  all  directions,  had  approached  and  en- 
tered the  metaphysics  of  religion.  The  disclosure 
of  ancient  errors  in  natural  science,  as  well  as  of 
the  falsehoods  of  the  papacy,  had  cherished  a 
rising  habit  of  doubt,  till  incredulity  was  deemed  a 
token  of  superior  wisdom.  A  depraved  heart  and 
an  evil  life  had  also  made  a  class  of  unbelievers, 
distinct  from  the  speculative  doubters  of  that  day ; 
and  the  writings  of  these,  though  refuted  and  re- 
jected, and  sometimes  suppressed,  and  sometimes 
only  suggesting  what  it  was  unsafe  to  say,  yet  by 
their  very  existence  confirmed  the  spirit  of  doubt 
where  they  did  not  create  the  spirit  of  denial. 
Theologians  felt  the  influence,  or  yielded  without 
consciousness.  It  was  as  if  a  mist  had  silently 
overspread  the  landscape  ;  and  neither  tree  nor  hill, 
neither  the  house  of  God  below,  nor  the  bright 
heaven  above,  was  seen  clearly.  Not  a  land  nor  a 
church  iii  Western  Europe  was  exempt  from  that 
peculiar  atmosphere,  in  which  all  forms  of  specula- 
tion glided  into  incredulity,  as  all  morbid  condi- 
tions of  the  body  sometimes  glide  into  the  prevail- 
ing pestilence.  In  Holland,  the  critical  skepticism 
of  Bayle  was  attended  by  the  skeptical  criticism  of 
Le  Clerc.  France  had  banished  the  Huguenot 
leaven  by  which  she  might  have  been  half  pre- 
served ;  and  within  the  very  bosom  of  the  national 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  tf 

church,  doubt  paused  at  no  middle  triumph,  but 
subjecting  priests,  nobles  and  philosophers  to  the 
genius  of  Voltaire,  ripened  into  all  unbelief,  till 
"blood  came  out  at  the  wine-press,  even  unto  the 
horse-bridles."  The  intellectual  life  of  the  Spanish 
peninsula  was  insufficient  to  disclose  to  the  world 
the  growth  of  that  infidelity  in  its"  churches  and 
cloisters,  amidst  which  Blanco  White  long  after- 
wards nourished  his  indignation  and  his  discon- 
tent. Even  at  Rome,  it  might  have  seemed  that 
the  old  foundations  were  broken,  when  Ganga- 
nelli  put  on  the  tiara  ;  a  better  man,  it  may  be,  and 
a  purer  Christian  than  his  later  predecessors,  yet 
surely  not  elected  for  the  firmness  of  his  faith  in 
the  system  which  made  the  Roman  See  a  papacy. 
Voltaire  and  Rousseau  exulted  contemptuously  in 
the  assertion  of  a  silent  Socinianism  at  Geneva. 
The  theologians  of  Germany  stood  for  a  while, 
offering  the  passive  and  motionless  resistance  of  a 
dike  to  the  slightest  onset  of  doubt;  but  when  they 
yielded,  it  was  as  the  failing  dike  throws  open 
meadows  and  villages  and  broad  plains  to  the  rush 
of  the  torrent.  In  the  Scottish  and  English  estab- 
lishments the  operation  was  a  doctrinal  lethargy, 
preserving,  in  the  former,  the  staid  sobriety  of  the 
ancestral  manners,  and  investing  itself,  in  the  lat- 
ter, with  the  robes  of  courtly  dignity,  or  passing 
into  the  mass  of  city  and  country  worldliness. 

Amidst  such  an   atmosphere,  so  widely  spread, 

the    instructions    of    the     English    nonconformists 

grew  more  and  more  indistinct.      The  spirit  of  the 

age  forbade  too  cordial  a  belief  in  any  thing  which 

1* 


10  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

the  senses  could  not  discern,  and  which  natural 
reason  had  failed  to  discover ;  and  the  passion  for 
religious  freedom  insisted  that  the  teachers  should 
be  protected  against  the  assaults  of  the  inquisitive. 
It  was  made  but  a  question  of  individual  opinion 
and  taste,  whether  one  doctrine  more  or  less  should 
be  announced  from  the  pulpit,  or  whether  it  should 
echo  only  the  inculcation  of  a  virtuous  practice. 
Minister  after  minister  became  a  literary  writer,  a 
critic,  an  antiquary,  an  essayist,  a  chemist,  an  en- 
cyclopaedist, a  political  economist,  a  controversial- 
ist; any  thing  rather  than  a  herald,  whose  clear 
trumpet  might  sound  out  the  old  gospel  of  the 
Puritans.  Congregation  after  congregation  faded 
away,  though  instructed  by  the  learning  of  Lard- 
ner,  the  eloquence  of  Foster,  the  diligence  of  Ben- 
son, or  the  varied  information  of  Kippis.  This 
could  not  be,  however,  without  resistance ;  the 
stricter  and  the  more  indistinct  drew  off  into  sepa- 
rate companies  ;  and  probably  the  accidental  pre- 
ponderance of  numbers  or  of  refinement,  rather 
than  any  peculiarity  of  discipline,  brought  most  of 
the  modern  liberality  into  the  Presbyterian  body, 
and  most  of  the  ancient  zeal  into  the  Independent. 
The  founders  of  the  chief  colonies  of  New  Eng- 
land were  of  one  heart  and  one  mind ;  and  this 
was  the  source  of  a  great  error  in  their  ecclesiasti- 
cal system.  It  forgot  that  never  again  could  the 
community  which  they  founded,  be  what  it  was  at 
first ;  that  they  had  collected  and  brought  into  the 
wilderness  a  peculiar  people,  but  must  afterwards 
meet  human  nature  as  it  arose,  in  all  its  varieties. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  11 

They   could    exclude    from    their   communion    or 
banish  from  their  territory  the  man  who  would  not 
share  their  faith  ;    but  they  could   not  decide  the 
character  nor  annul  the   birthright   of  the  children 
who    should    succeed    to   their  own  places.      The 
apostolic  conception  of  a   church  as  an   assembly 
of  believers,  received,  on  the   profession   of  their 
faith,  to  the  sacraments,  and   to   the   fellowship  of 
the  saints,  and  seeking  there   the   grace  by  which 
they  might  be   trained   for  heaven,  and   subject  to 
exclusion  on  the  proof  of  wilful   and   persevering 
sin,  till  they  should  furnish  the  fruits  of  penitence, 
was  not  at  all  obscure  or  difficult.     It  was  no  ob- 
jection that  it  might  be  compared  with  the  net  of  a 
fisherman,  which  gathers  up  all   alike,  or  with   a 
field  in  which  tares  are  nightly  sown  by  an  enemy. 
The  settlers  of  New  England,  however,  had  learned 
to   dread   chiefly  the  ills   of  a  church   which  was 
identical  with  a  nation  ;  and  it  was  their  endeavor 
so  to  fence  round  their  own,  that,  as  far  as  might 
be,  it  should  embrace  none   but  spiritual,  accepted 
followers   of  the  Captain  of  salvation.     That  the 
children  of  such  should  accompany  their  parents  to 
the   baptismal    waters,    they    gladly    granted ;   but 
since  the   children  might   forsake  the  footsteps  of 
the  parents,  it  was  necessary  to  the  idea  of  a  pure 
church  to  deem  baptism  only  an   entrance  to  an 
outer  porch,  while   the   Lord's   Supper,  or  the  pre- 
vious assumption  of  the  covenant,  admitted  to  the 
church  itself,  the  inner  sanctuary.     But  each  suc- 
ceeding generation  felt  the   evil ;  and  each,  in  its 
own  manner,  attempted  its  removal.     It  was  (lift- 


12       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

tinctly  at  war  with  the  practice  of  the  apostles  ;  it 
claimed  for  the  Puritan  churches  a  character  which 
the  primitive  churches  never  possessed;  it  pushed 
the  hereditary  principle  in  baptism  to  a  height  un- 
known to  a  religion  that  has  no  respect  of  persons  ; 
it  discouraged  many  honest  and  devout  hearts,  by 
requiring  the  certainty  of  perseverance  before  it 
offered  a  welcome  to  the  holy  table  ;  it  made  the 
delay  of  a  religious  profession  a  matter  of  pru- 
dence, of  modesty,  almost  of  duty ;  it  lessened  the 
value  of  the  sacraments  and  of  all  Christian  com- 
munion ;  it  threw  a  mantle  of  personal  sanctity 
over  those  who  had  already  passed  the  barrier; 
and  it  sanctioned  a  practical  falsehood,  since,  after 
all,  no  man  believed  that  many  who  were  within 
were  indeed  purer  than  many  who  were  without. 
The  "  Halfway  Covenant,"  first  adopted  in  1662, 
was  the  earliest  effort  against  this  system,  giving  to 
parents  who  were  not  communicants,  the  privilege 
of  baptism  for  their  children,  and  of  a  solemn  ac- 
knowledgment of  Christian  truth  for  themselves. 
But  while  it  widened  the  circle  of  the  baptized,  its 
natural  effect  was  to  strengthen  the  hesitation  of 
the  undecided,  and  1o  lessen  the  company  of  com- 
municants. By  the  next  effort,  the  communion 
table  was  thrown  open  ;  but  the  excellent  Stoddard 
of  Northampton,  and  his  associates  in  the  defence 
of  this  principle,  were  embarrassed  by  their  Cal- 
vinism. It  compelled  them  to  acknowledge  that 
every  communicant,  at  the  period  of  his  admission, 
was  either  distinctly  renewed  in  spirit,  and  there- 
fore sure  to  persevere,  or  else  as  distinctly  unre- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  13 

newed,  and  therefore  quite  destitute  of  the  inward 
affections  without  which  the  sacrament  must  be  a 
vain,  if  not  a  profane  observance.  The  feeblest 
faith  might  be  nourished  by  such  an  ordinance; 
but  its  administration,  where  not  even  the  feeblest 
faith  was  supposed  or  hoped,  could  not  but  be,  to 
many  an  earnest  mind,  a  painful  and  repulsive 
practice.  It  is  not  strange  that  Edwards,  the  grand- 
son and  successor  of  Stoddard,  renounced  such  a 
discipline;  but  it  is  strange  that  he  was  not  shaken, 
either  in  his  own  doctrine  of  perseverance,  or  in  its 
application.  In  the  European  communions,  that 
doctrine,  like  that  of  predestination,  with  which  it 
was  linked,  had  no  voice,  except  for  the  encourage- 
ment of  the  weak,  and  the  comfort  of  the  despond- 
ing. But  when,  in  the  conversation  of  every  day, 
the  propositions  were  placed  side  by  side,  that  none 
but  the  regenerate  ought  to  be  members  of  a  Chris- 
tian communion,  that  regeneration  was  a  spiritual 
change  of  which  he  who  had  received  it  could 
hardly  fail  to  be  clearly  conscious,  and  that  the  re- 
generate could  never  lose  the  prize ;  many  must 
have  advanced  with  presumption,  many  must  have 
withdrawn  with  timidity  and  regret;  many  must 
have  willingly  seen  themselves  left  to  their  own  in- 
diilerence,  unfit  by  their  own  acknowledgment; 
and  many  others  must  have  looked  with  peculiar 
suspicion  towards  the  small  number  who  seemed, 
as  they  imagined,  to  profess  not  so  much  their 
humble  hope,  as  their  established  holiness.  Neither 
principle,  however  had  quite  prevailed;  and  when 
Whitefield  first  passed  like  a  cloud  over  New  Eng- 


14  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASLICAL 

land,  with  thunder  and  lightning  and  rain,  there 
was  already,  a  stricter  and  a  gentler  party.  One 
was  easily  open  to  fanaticism ;  the  other  was  far 
too  much  inclined  to  erase  the  stronger  lines  that 
enclose  the  camp  of  salvation.  There  was  not 
much  communication  with  the  theologians  of  the 
mother  land ;  and  Arianism  had  only  been  named 
as  a  distant  heresy. 


CHAPTER   II. 


It  was  on  a  September  evening  in  1740,  that 
Whitefield,  a  young  Presbyter  of  the  Church  of 
England,  arrived  at  Boston.  The  "  Great  Awaken- 
ing," which  began  six  years  before  at  Northamp- 
ton, under  the  ministry  of  Edwards,  had  spread 
through  some  neighboring  regions  of  Massachu- 
setts and  Connecticut,  and  for  the  time  had  died 
away.  Whitefield,  whose  fame  had  gone  before 
him  while  he  traversed  the  colonies,  was  met, 
several  miles  from  the  town,  by  a  company  of  gen- 
tlemen, with  one  or  two  ministers ;  and  for  ten 
days  he  preached  to  such  congregations  as  had 
never  before  been  assembled  in  America.  There 
were  in  Boston  eleven  places  of  worship  of  the 
established  order.     Foxcroft  and   Chauncey  were 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  %5 

the  ministers  of  the  first  church;  the  elder,  an 
Episcopalian   by  education,  but  ardent  in  his  love 

of  the  Puritan  doctrines,  and  the  most  attractive 
preacher  of  his  time,  till  an  early  paralysis  some- 
what shook  his  powers  ;  the  younger,  less  pleasing 
in  the  pulpit,  but  a  cool,  bold  and  vigorous  thinker. 
The  pastor  of  the  Second,  or  Old  North  Church, 
was  Joshua  Gee,  a  man  of  superior  talents,  but 
uniting  doctrinal  zeal  with  constitutional  indolence. 
Over  the  Old  South  Church  were  Sewall,  whom 
Unitarianism  has  described  as  the  greatest  bigot  of 
the  time,  and  Prince,  the  pious  chronologist.  The 
Brattle  Street  Church  had  been  organized  apart 
from  the  Cambridge  platform,  under  a  plan  which 
gave  to  the  whole  people  the  election  of  their  min- 
ister, and  for  some  time  it  was  excluded  from  the 
general  fellowship  ;  but  it  had  long  prospered,  and 
was  prospering  still  under  the  learned  Colman,  its 
earliest  pastor,  now  the  oldest  of  the  clergy  of  Bos- 
ton, and  under  his  ardent  colleague,  William 
Cooper.  Webb  was  the  minister  of  the  New 
North  Church ;  Checkly,  of  the  New  South  in 
Summer  street;  Samuel  Mather,  the  son  of  Cotton 
Mather,  of  a  congregation  which  separated  with 
him  from  the  New  North  Church,  and  worshipped 
in  the  building  which  was  called  the  New  Brick 
Meeting-house  ;  Moorhead  of  the  congregation  in 
Federal  street,  which  was  founded  by  Irish  Protes- 
tants, and  was  Presbyterian  in  its  constitution; 
Mather  Byles,  of  the  church  in  Hollis  street ;  Wel- 
steed,  of  that  in  Middle  street ;  and  Hooper,  a 
Scotchman,    who    afterwards    received    Episcopal 


16       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

orders,  of  the  West  Church,  which  had  been  but 
three  or  four  years  in  existance.  Within  all  these 
churches  rang  the  clear  music  of  that  youthful 
voice  which  every  where  so  bowed  the  hearts  of 
men  ;  and  when,  on  the  return  of  Whitefield  from 
the  Eastern  coast,  he  preached  his  farewell  sermon 
on  the  Common,  he  supposed,  somewhat  extrava- 
gantly indeed,  that  he  had  thirty  thousand  hearers. 
After  a  few  months,  Whitefield  was  followed  by 
the  bold  and  unsparing  Gilbert  Tennent.  There 
was  a  wide  and  almost  tumultuous  swell  of  relig- 
ious emotion  ;  angels  rejoiced  in  heaven,  and  good 
men  on  earth,  over  many  a  repentant  sinner ;  the 
stranger  saw  a  new  seriousness  on  the  face  of  vil- 
lages and  towns ;  and  pastors  acknowledged  with 
a  gush  of  gratitude,  that  a  single  season  had  yielded 
them  a  richer  harvest  than  a  lifetime  before.  But 
the  youth  of  Whitefield  and  the  harshness  of  Ten- 
nent had  disowned  the  prevailing  reverence  for 
authorities,  and  both  of  them  had  intimated  with 
distinctness  and  with  great  uncharitableness,  their 
opinion  of  the  spiritual  estate  of  many  of  the  clergy. 
The  college  at  Cambridge  was  pronounced  by 
Whitefield  to  be,  "  as  far  as  he  could  gather,  not 
far  superior  to  the  English  Universities  in  piety 
and  true  godliness."  "  They  told  me,"  says  Whee- 
lock,  then  a  warm  itinerant,  recording  in  his  journal 
the  effect  of  a  sermon  of  his  own  at  Boston,  — 
"  they  told  me  they  believed  that  Mather  Byles 
was  never  so  lashed  in  his  life."  The  tide  of  censo- 
rious enthusiasm  rose  higher  and  higher ;  and  on 
its  topmost  wave  came  Davenport  of  Long  Island, 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  17 

who  was  not  afraid  to  pronounce  publicly  the 
names  of  the  unconverted  ministers.  A  declara- 
tion prepared  by  all  the  Congregational  clergy  of 
Bbslon  refused  him  their  pulpits  ;  the  law  laid  its 
hand  upon  him ;  the  ministers  interceded ;  and  he 
was  acquitted  as  insane,  and  published  afterwards 
a  recantation  of  his  extravagance. 

The  appearance  of  Davenport  in  Boston  was  in 
1742 ;  and  as  he  was  but  the  foremost  of  a  con- 
siderable body  who  were  scattered  through  the 
provinces,  the  pastors  of  Massachusetts,  when  they 
met  in  their  general  Convention  in  1743,  after  a 
very  careful,  faithful  and  judicious  sermon  from 
Appleton  of  Cambridge,  appointed  a  committee  of 
inquiry.  On  their  report,  a  "testimony1'  was 
adopted,  against  the  doctrinal  errors  of  relying  on 
secret  impulses  without  the  word,  of  affirming  that 
there  can  be  no  conversion  without  a  knowledge 
of  the  time,  or  without  assurance,  of  denying  that 
sanctification  is  an  evidence  of  justification,  with 
other  Antincmian  and  Familistical  opinions  ;  and 
against  the  disorders  in  practice,  of  itinerancy  with- 
out the  assent  of  the  settled  pastors,  of  assuming 
the  sacred  office  without  knowledge  or  a  call,  of 
ordination  without  a  charge,  of  separation,  of  pro- 
nouncing judgment  on  the  spiritual  state  of  others, 
as  if  the  heart  could  be  seen,  and  of  tumultuous 
and  indecent  confusion  in  religious  assemblies. 
At  the  same  time  they  testified  also  against  the 
impiety  of  reproaching  the  work  of  the  Spirit  in 
the  souls  of  Christians.  A  majority  of  thirty-eight 
upheld  this  testimony,  while  others  would  have 
2 


18  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

concurred  in  guarding  the  people  against  the  delu- 
sions which  might  be  easy  at  such  a  season  as  had 
lately  been  witnessed,  but  would  gladly  have  added 
a  distinct  testimony  to  the  revival  of  religion  in  the 
provinces.  Another  convention  was  summoned 
by  this  minority ;  and  on  the  day  after  the  com- 
mencement, ninety  ministers  were  present,  all  of 
whom  were  substantially  united  in  judgment. 
The  "  testimony"  which  they  signed,  received  also 
the  consent  of  thirty  who  were  absent ;  but  about 
thirty  of  the  whole  number  of  signatures  were 
those  of  clergymen  in  New  Hampshire,  Maine, 
Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut.  Tt  was  cautious 
and  discriminating,  but  decided  and  solemn,  and 
embraced  a  warning  against  being  drawn  into 
Arminianism,  as  well  as  Antinomianism,  through 
fear  of  the  opposite  errors.  There  were  at  that 
time  about  a  hundred  and  seventy-five  congrega- 
tions in  Massachusetts  ;  so  that  at  least  half  of  the 
clergy  were  thus  arrayed  as  friends  of  the  more 
ardent  efforts  and  appeals  which  had  been  so 
widely  fruitful. 

First  among  the  opponents  of  the  excitement, 
Chauncy  had  published  an  account  of  the  French 
Prophets,  which  was  republished  in  Scotland,  and 
obtained  for  him  a  Scottish  doctorate  ;  and  when 
the  "  Thoughts  on  the  Revival,"  by  Edwards,  ap- 
peared in  1742,  they  were  followed  in  1743,  by 
Chauncy's  "  Seasonable  Thoughts  on  the  State  of 
Religion  in  New  England."  While  Edwards  ac- 
knowledged the  evils  ,  but  insisted  that  they  ought 
not  to  obscure  the  proofs  of  a  mighty  and  infinite 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  19 

blessing,  bis  adversary  contended  that  they  had 
held  a  most  unhappy  preponderance  in  the  whole 
commotion.  Turell,  of  Medford,  published  in  its 
defence  a  dialogue  on  the  times,  with  directions  to 
his  people  ;  which,  notwithstanding,  were  bitterly 
assailed  by  Andrew  Croswell,  the  enthusiastic 
champion  of  Davenport  and  of  excess.  A  sermon 
on  charity,  which  was  preached  by  Ashley,  of 
Deerfield,  in  the  Brattle  street  pulpit,  and  after- 
wards printed,  compelled  Cooper  to  remonstrate 
through  the  press  against  being  supposed  to  have 
changed  the  views  with  which  he  had  signed  the 
second  testimony.  The  opinions  of  Chauncy  and 
Ashley  were  sustained  by  Hancock,  of  Braintree  ; 
Prescott,  of  Salem  ;  Pickering,  of  Ipswich  ;  Balch, 
of  Bradford ;  Tucker,  of  Newbury ;  Barnard,  of 
Haverhill  ;  and  others  of  the  Essex  ministers  who 
were  known  as  Arminians. 

In  the  Autumn  of  1744,  Whitefield  a  socond 
time  visited  New  England  and  Boston,  a  some- 
what older  and  wiser  man  ;  but  he  was  now  en- 
countered by  a  wide  prejudice,  which  the  remoter 
issues  of  his  first  visit,  not  yet  disclaimed  by  him= 
self,  had  not  unjustly  nourished.  Although  at  the 
request  of  Colman,  he  administered  the  sacrament, 
a  letter  from  two  neighboring  associations  of  minis- 
ters to  the  associated  ministers  of  Boston  and 
Charlestown,  remonstrated  against  his  admission  to 
the  pulpits  of  Massachusetts,  avowing  the  belief 
that  his  former  journey  had  resulted  in  less  of  good 
than  of  evil.  Another  entire  association,  at  the  re- 
quest of  Appleton  of  Cambridge  for  their  counsel, 


20       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

offered  the  same  opinion.  The  whole  faculty  of 
Cambridge  prepared  a  public  testimony  against  his 
enthusiasm,  uncharitableness,  extempore  preaching, 
itinerancy,  and  mismanagement  in  the  affairs  of 
the  Orphan  House,  in  Georgia;  Yale  College 
added  a  similar  declaration ;  a  vehement  letter,  of 
the  same  character,  was  issued  by  Henchman  of 
Lynn;  and  testimonies  followed  from  associations 
in  Norfolk,  Plymouth,  Middlesex,  Worcester,  and 
Bristol.  Several  of  these  divines,  such  as  Apple- 
ton,  Sewall,  Cotton,  Eells,  the  elder  Walter,  Per- 
kins, Allen,  and  Prasident  Holyoke,  had  given 
their  aid  or  their  testimony  to  the  revival :  but 
many  of  them  had  regarded  it  from  the  beginning 
with  suspicion  and  alarm. 

Whitefield  replied  to  Chauncy  and  to  the  faculty 
of  Cambridge,  in  the  language  of  respect  and  can- 
dor ;  acknowledged  some  of  his  early  mistakes  ; 
but  gave  little  satisfaction.  He  was  upheld  at 
Boston  by  Prince,  Webb,  Foxcroft,  and  Gee ;  and 
when  he  was  there  again  in  1745,  the  commanders 
and  soldiers  who  conquered  Louisburg,  drank  from 
his  eloquence  a  more  religious  energy  ih&n  that 
which  usually  attends  an  army  to  its  campaigns. 
In  the  mean  time,  the  several  sermons  before  the 
Convention  of  ministers,  very  precious  documents 
for  him  who  would  note  the  progress  of  theological 
opinion,  directed  their  shafts  against  the  exhorters 
and  the  separatists.  Such  was  the  discourse,  in 
1742,  of  Loring,  of  Sudbury,  a  divine  warmly  at- 
tached to  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  alone. 
So  Chauncy,  in  1744,  chose  for  his  theme  the  con- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  2L 

tempt  into  which  the  ministry  must  not  permit 
themselves  to  fall,  and  pointed  to  the  rigorous  ex- 
ercise of  discipline  as  the  remedy  for  the  ills  of  the 
times.  In  the  following  year,  Clark,  of  Salem,  a 
decided  Calvinist,  yet  more  directly  urged  this 
hazardous  counsel.  The  friends  of  the  revival, 
however,  met  in  Boston,  in  the  autumn  of  1745, 
and  issued  yet  another  testimony.  While  they 
magnified  the  display  of  the  doctrines  of  the  gospel 
during  the  revival,  and  lamented  the  profaneness 
which  had  flowed  from  the  opposition,  they  spoke 
distinctly  of  an  awful  danger  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  agency  of  the  Holy  Spirit  might  be  banished, 
first  from  the  pulpits  and  then  from  the  land ;  and 
they  called  on  all  ministers,  whatever  might  have 
been  their  judgement  of  the  revival,  to  unite  for  the 
defence  and  promotion  of  the  truth  against  all 
errors,  "in  particular  the  Socinian,  Antinomian, 
and  Arminian."  The  Convention  sermon  of  1746 
was  preached  by  Gay,  of  Hingham,  on  the  dove- 
like character  which  is  enjoined  on  Christian  min- 
isters. But  the  tendencies  of  the  day  broke  forth 
in  a  controversy  on  Arminianism,  between  Balch, 
of  Bradford,  on  one  side,  and  Wigglesworth,  of 
Ipswich,  and  Chipman  of  Beverly,  on  the  other. 

When  the  sounds  of  the  revival  were  now  echo- 
ing more  faintly  and  passing  away,  the  clergy  of 
New  England  might  probably  be  arranged  under 
four  classes,  in  their  relation  to  that  extensive  tem- 
pest of  feeling.  A  considerable  body  esteemed  it 
a  divine  interposition  throughout ;  and  while  they 
would  not  justify  disorder,  vet  pointed  to  fifty 
2* 


22       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

thousand  new  communicants,  and  honored  White- 
field  with  an  unalloyed  reverence.  A  smaller 
company  adhered  to  the  revival,  but  deplored  and 
condemed  the  career  of  Whitefield,  when  they  saw 
the  unhappy  errors  with  which  the  revival  had 
been  blended.  More  numerous  was  that  class, 
embracing  probably  half  of  the  ministers  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  almost  all  in  Connecticut,  who 
could  not  speak  without  hesitation,  of  the  march  of 
events,  nor  desire  its  renewal,  while  yet  they  be- 
lieved and  preached  the  doctrines  of  their  fathers, 
and  implored  the  special  grace  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
for  every  success  in  their  labors,  and  every  blessing 
on  their  own  spirits.  There  remained  a  few,  who 
were  cold  at  heart  towards  some  portions  of  the 
common  creed  ;  were  secretly,  and  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously, willing  to  exchange  it  for  a  form  of  doc- 
trine which  Arminius  would  not  have  recognized 
as  his  own  ;  and  were  less  anxious  for  any  doctrine 
than  for  their  own  intellectual  freedom,  it  was  no 
slight  calamity,  that  during  the  remainder  of  that 
century,  these  parties  and  all  others  as  they  arose, 
were  ever  verging  towards  a  simpler  division,  until 
two  only  survived  ;  two,  directly  and  irreconcilably 
hostile,  and  hostile  only. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  23 


CHAPTER   III. 

Edwards  led  the  way  at  Northampton,  in  assert- 
ing with  strictness  the  principle  that  evidence  of 
piety,  beyond  a  profession  of  the  faith,  and  a  wish 
to  observe  the  commandment,  should  be  offered 
before  any  should  be  received  to  the  table  of  com- 
munion. An  open  strife  ensued;  and  the  middle 
ground  could  be  occupied  by  neither  party,  because 
it  would  have  seemed  at  variance  with  the  doctrine 
of  necessary  perseverance,  sustained  by  both,  and 
also  with  the  metaphysical  theory  of  conversion, 
adopted  by  Edwards.  That  middle  ground  would 
have  been,  to  suppose  that  where  a  deep  and 
earnest  wish  to  seek  the  grace  of  God  in  his  ap- 
pointed paths  is  united  with  the  belief  of  the  gos- 
pel, the  grace  which  is  sought  is  already  present ; 
and  that  when  the  wish  ceases,  or  ceases  to  be 
deep  and  earnest,  the  branch  has  lost  its  inward 
union  with  the  vine,  and  should  either  renew  it  or 
no  longer  attempt  to  preserve  its  outward  symbol. 
On  one  side  of  this  ground,  the  system  of  Wil- 
liams of  Lebanon,  who  was  the  opponent  of  Ed- 
wards, seemed,  though  he  repelled  the  interpreta- 
tion, to  admit  that  those  who  knew  themselves  to 
be  unmoved  by  heavenly  grace  might  safely  sit 
down  at  the  holy  table.  On  the  other  side,  Ed- 
wards demanded,  before  perseverance,  the  proof 
which  perseverance  alone  could  furnish  ;  and,  since 


24       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

all  perceived  that  many  who  had  laid  their  hands 
upon  the  plough  had  turned  back  from  the  field,  it 
became  needful,  either  to  practise  a  long,  unau- 
thorized and  perilous  delay,  or  to  hazard  an  exten- 
sive and  singularly  dreadful  hypocrisy,  or  to  brave 
the  just  odium  that  could  not  be  shunned  by  a 
tribunal  which  assumed  the  office  of  searching  the 
hearts,  and  of  answering  to  men  for  their  own  sal- 
vation. In  the  progress  of  the  controversy,  Ed- 
wards was  compelled  to  withdraw  from  his  parish 
at  Northampton  ;  but  his  eminent  name  became  a 
rallying  standard  ;  and  men  grew  more  than  ever 
accustomed  to  associate  any  other  "  doctrine  of  the 
will "  except  his  own  with  the  most  perilous  here- 
sies. He  left  his  strong  grasp  deeply  imprinted  on 
the  divinity  and  the  religion  of  New  England; 
which  have  owed  much  to  the  depth  of  his  char- 
acter and  the  firmness  of  his  conscience,  but  little 
to  the  austerity  of  his  temper,  and  to  that  alliance 
which  he  founded  between  devout  feeling  and 
metaphysics. 

There  had  been  much  that  commanded  respect 
in  the  frank,  direct,  and  courageous  opposition  of 
Chauncy.  While  many  had  wavered,  and  many 
had  shrunk,  for  a  time,  from  declaring  the  suspicion 
which  they  felt,  he  stood  up  though  alone  amongst 
the  clergy  of  the  capital,  and  resisted  the  whole 
flood  of  innovation.  He  was  no  orator;  he  wrote 
without  elegance  ;  he  seems  to  have  had  little 
imagination,  and  little  warmth  of  feeling,  except 
that  which  speaks  in  the  sharp,  angry  reply  ;  but 
he   employed  vigorous  argument  with  masculine 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  25 

ability;  assailing,  in  the  same  temper, episcopacy, 
the  revival  and  the  doctrines  of  Sandeman.  To 
him,  however,  among  all  the  eminent  divines  of 
New  England,  belongs  the  unhappy  pre-eminence 
of  having  been  the  first  to  take  the  spirit  of  doubt 
to  his  bosom.  He  was  said  to  question  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  soul  between  death  and  the 
resurrection  ;  he  wrote  in  his  latter  days  against 
the  eternity  of  retribution;  and  he  nourished  that 
sarcastic  hostility  to  the  sentiments  of  past  ages  and 
the  determinations  of  venerable  bodies  on  doctrine, 
which,  like  a  light  troop  of  scouts,  precede  the  main 
mlt,  and  explore  the  danger.  Deeply  significant 
was  his  passing  sneer  against  the  "  Homoousianity  " 
of  the  Nicene  council. 

In  the  Brattle  Street  Church,  Samuel  Cooper 
succeeded,  in  1746,  to  the  place  of  his  pious  father, 
and  in  the  next  year  died  the  able  and  venerable 
Colman  ;  while  Jonathan  May  hew,  of  the  mission- 
ary family  of  the  Mayhews  of  Martha's  Vineyard, 
succeeded  Hooper  at  the  West  Church,  and 
Hooper,  having  taken  episcopal  orders,  became 
the  rector  of  Trinity  Church.  At  the  ordination 
of  May  hew,  he  received  the  charge  from  the  lips 
of  his  father ;  but  it  was  soon  apparent,  that  he  had 
inherited  more  of  the  Puritan  hostility  to  episco- 
pacy and  the  Puritan  coldness  to  royalty  than  of 
the  divinity  which  his  ancestors  had  taught  amongst 
the  remnant  of  the  aborigines.  Bold,  liberal,  in- 
dignant, with  talents  of  some  brilliancy,  and  with 
much  liveliness  of  style,  he  was  chiefly  anxious  for 
freedom  from  all  the   bonds  which  human  author- 


26  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

ity  can  impose  upon  the  mind,  and  he  seemed  to 
himself  to  see  oppression  in  the  doctrines  of  his 
predecessors  and  his  associates.  He  refrained 
from  union  with  the  Boston  association  of  min- 
isters ;  he  assailed  with  a  high  hand  the  doctrine 
of  justification  by  faith  ;  he  called  the  Athanasian 
creed,  "  a  riddle,  still  somewhat  enigmatical,  not- 
withstanding all  the  labors  of  the  pious  and  meta- 
physical Waterland  ; "  he  jested  on  the  Canticles  ; 
he  corresponded  with  Lardner,  Benson,  Kippis, 
and  Blackburne  ;  and  he  ventured  allusions  which 
seemed  even  to  himself  too  rash  and  reckless,  to 
that  doctrine  of  the  divine  nature  which  was  held 
by  Christendom,  as  of  all  doctrines  the  most 
august. 

In  1754,  Whitefield  was  again  in  Boston  ;  but 
the  old  enthusiasm  awoke  no  more.  Far  other 
voices  were  now  heard  from  England  ;  voices, 
whose  chief  burden  was  the  unbounded  praise  of 
freedom  of  inquiry.  Under  a  shield  so  broad,  the 
rising  spirit  of  doubt  could  always  obtain  a  shelter, 
and  push  its  attacks  at  once  securely  and  secretly. 
The  dread  of  creeds  and  confessions  was  uttered 
aloud  ;  especially  in  sermons  and  charges  at  many 
ordinations.  But  men  were  never  accustomed  to 
complain  earnestly  of  the  jurisdiction  of  a  power 
whose  decisions  they  approved  ;  or,  if  they  began 
with  opposing  simply  the  power,  they  would  be 
drawn,  in  the  excitement  and  prejudice  of  the  con- 
test, to  arraign  also  its  decisions.  There  could  be 
no  small  peril  from  any  other  creeds  or  confessions, 
except  those  of  the  ancient  church,  or  those  which 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  27 

had  been  accepted  and  established  by  the  fathers 
of  New  England.  One  class  or  the  other  must 
have  been  fell  as  a  burden,  or  feared  as  a  tribunal 
of  appeal.  The  ancient  creeds  had  been  chiefly 
framed  in  defence  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity; 
the  modern  added  the  doctrines  of  election,  re- 
demption, and  sanctiiication.  From  the  latter, 
especially,  the  appeal  to  the  language  and  spirit  of 
the  Scriptures  was  pushed  by  many  divines  who 
disliked  the  Calvinistic  view  of  election,  and  were 
inclined  to  a  general  system  of  theology  which 
lacked  the  more  repulsive  features  of  Calvinism. 
In  a  warfare  like  this,  they  could  not  despise  the 
aid  of  able  allies  ;  there  were  able  allies,  whom 
they  themselves  at  first  deemed  dangerous ;  but 
they  soon  learned  the  phrases,  and  ceased  to  shrink 
from  the  peculiarities,  of  those  who  fought  at  their 
side.  Andrew  Eliot,  in  1754,  addressed  to  a  min- 
ister, in  an  ordination  sermon,  the  following  lan- 
guage, which  was  repeated  on  a  similar  occasion 
by  Cook,  of  Sudbury  :  "  As  to  the  sublime  and 
mysterious  doctrines  of  the  gospel,  the  essence  of 
God,  the  manner  of  the  divine  substance,  the  de- 
crees of  God,  predestination,  election,  reprobation, 
the  manner  of  the  divine  operation  upon  his  crea- 
tures, upon  moral  agents,  and  of  the  Spirit  in  the 
conversion  of  a  sinner,  (which  some  delight  to 
dwell  upon  in  their  preaching,)  they  are  the  deep 
things  of  God,  which  the  Spirit  of  God  alone  can 
search  out ;  and  when  you  mention  them,  if  you 
are  wise  and  have  an  humble  sense  of  your  own 
weakness  and   ignorance,  you  will    not   be    wise 


28       FAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 


above  what  is  written."  In  the  spirit  of  such  a 
counsel,  these  loftier  themes  were  touched  by  many 
of  the  succeeding  generation  of  preachers,  only 
through  a  repetition  of  the  mere  words  nf  Scrip- 
ture. But  a  practice  so  uncandid  in  its  motive, 
could  not  but  be  dishonorable  in  its  issue.  If  the 
doctrine  of  Calvin,  or  any  of  these  theories,  were 
not  believed  ;  if  the  Westminster  Confession  or 
the  Thirty-Nine  Articles  had  uttered  false  or  un- 
certain statements  ;  it  was  easy,  and  it  would  have 
been  manly  to  have  met  them  with  direct  denial, 
sustained  by  open  argument.  But  to  throw  a  vast 
mass  of  glorious  truth  entirely  into  obscurity,  be- 
cause its  light  had  dazzled  too  much  ;  to  forbid 
the  exercise  of  thought  on  the  high  things  of  holy 
writ,  even  so  far  as  to  their  expression  in  different 
words  ;  could   but  end  in  all  doubt  and  confusion. 


CHAPTER    IV. 


It  was  in  1756,  that  an  edition  of  Emlyn's 
Humble  Inquiry  appeared  at  Boston.  A  direct, 
elaborate,  and  well  known  argument  against  the 
deity  of  the  Redeemer  was  launched  abroad,  at  a 
period  when  books  were  few,  and  when  the  printer 
of  such  a  book  could  not  well  have  relied  merely 


HISTORY    OF    \K\V    ENGLAND.  29 

on   public  curiosity  for  his  reimbursement     The 

enterprise  was  afterwards  ascribed  to  Mayhew  and 
some  of  his  friends,  by  those  who  believed  it  an 
honor  to  his  name  ;  and  he  has  been  styled  the 
first  Unitarian  preacher  in  America.  When  the 
elder  President  Adams,  in  his  old  age,  affirmed 
that  Unitarianism  had  been  taught  by  some  dis- 
tinguished divines,  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  and  named  amongst  them  Gay  and 
Mayhew,  his  wishes  may  have  deceived  his  mem- 
ory in  one  instance  as  well  as  in  the  other;  for,  in 
1746,  Gay  had  expressly  named  the  Son  "a divine 
person,  the  mighty  God,"  and  the  Spirit,  a  u  person 
of  the  Godhead."  The  testimony  of  the  daughter 
of  Mayhew,  who  knew  her  father  only  in  her  child- 
hood, is  no  more  decisive.  He  was  unknown  to 
Freeman,  who  describes  him  as  an  Anti-Trinita- 
rian of  the  school  of  Clarke,  and  as  allowing  the 
pre-existence  of  Christ,  and  the  atonement.  His 
own  writings,  except  a  few  daring  passages,  which 
rather  disclose  his  temper  than  his  doctrinal  sys- 
tem, neither  sustain  nor  repel  the  censure  or  the 
eulogy,  unless,  indeed,  they  should  be  interpreted 
by  their  silence.  But  that  silence  itself;  the  in- 
fluence of  his  example  ;  and  the  manner  of  Chaun- 
cy,  who,  in  his  funeral  sermon,  defends  him  with 
vigor  against  the  charge  of  rejecting  the  atonement, 
while  he  speaks  not  a  word  of  the  charge  by  which 
it  had  been,  no  doubt,  accompanied,  —  all  confirm 
the  conclusion  that  his  mind  was,  at  least,  leaning 
to  the  system  of  negation.  He  was  not  a  timid 
man  ;  and  had  he  absolutely  disavowed  the  ortho- 
3 


30       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

dox  belief,  he  might  probably  have  avowed  his 
opinion  ;  but  the  very  boldness  of  his  mind,  with  the 
aid  of  two  or  three  lay  friends  who  had  advanced  still 
further,  might  have  led  him  to  indulge  his  oppo- 
sition to  the  commandments  of  men,  by  circulating 
a  work  that  would  throw  over  an  established  and 
a  mysterious  doctrine  some  air  of  doubtfulness, 
and  therefore  of  unimportance.  However  it  were, 
the  book  was  published,  with  a  dedicatory  letter 
from  "a  layman,"  (G.  T.,)  to  the  clergy  of  all  de- 
nominations in  New  England,  couched  in  the  half- 
respectful,  half-ironical  style  of  a  daring  but  skilful 
innovator.  An  answer  was  prepared  by  President 
Burr,  of  Princeton ;  and  a  sermon  by  Pemberton, 
on  the  divinity  of  the  Saviour,  appeared,  with  a 
preface  bearing  the  signatures  of  Sewall,  Foxcroft, 
and  Prince,  and  lamenting,  without  naming,  the 
recent  republication,  which  had  been  "  to  the  great 
grief  and  offence,"  they  said,  "of  many  amongst 
ns." 

The  Convention  sermon  of  Rand  of  Kingston, 
in  1757,  betrayed  the  spreading  sentiment  of 
jealousy,  lest  any  should  exercise  dominion  over 
the  faith  of  a  Christian,  and  was  cool  in  its  tone 
and  spirit ;  while  that  of  1758,  by  Townsend  of 
Needham,  was  practical,  but  indecisive  in  doctrine. 
President  Burr  survived  not  long  his  answer  to 
Emelyn  ;  and  Edwards  was  his  successor,  only  to 
be  snatched  away  ;  while  the  death  of  Prince,  at 
Boston,  removed  another  of  the  honored  pillars  of 
ancient  orthodoxy.  The  publications  of  May  hew 
had  already  stirred  up  a  sentiment  of  alarm,  which 


BISTOBY    OK    NEW    ENGLAND.  31 

was,  perhaps, greatest  at  a  distance.  Bellamy,  one 
of  the  ablest  of  the  stricter  Calvinists,  after  speak- 
ing, in  17C0,  of  the  manner  in  which  the  Shorter 
Catechism  had  been  remodelled  in  New  Hamp- 
shire, "  even  to  omit  the  Trinity,"  proceeds  in  this 
strain  :  u  Come  from  New  Hampshire  along  to 
Boston,  and  see  there  a  celebrated  doctor  of  di- 
vinity, at  the  head  of  a  large  party!  He  boldly 
ridicules  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and  denies  the 
doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  alone,  in  the  sight 
of  all  the  country,  in  his  book  of  sermons."  Per- 
haps it  was  for  this  cause  that  the  Convention 
discourse  of  Parkman  of  Westborough,  in  1761, 
the  theme  of  which  was  the  constraining  love  of 
Christ,  closed  with  the  ascription  of  glory  to  the 
Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost;  an  ascrip- 
tion scarcely  ever  appended  to  the  printed  sermons 
of  that  day.  At  the  following  Commencement* 
too,  the  venerable  John  Barnard,  almost  at  the  age 
of  fourscore,  poured  forth  a  fervent  exhortation  to 
the  clergy,  in  which,  when  he  told  them  that,  de- 
parting from  the  truth,  they  might  cast  "  an  un- 
seemly sneer  at  the  great  doctrine  of  the  true 
divinity  of  Christ,"  none  could  mistake  the  allu- 
sion to  Mayhew.  He  himself,  however,  pursued 
his  own  path  ;  and,  in  the  next  year,  startled  men 
by  a  sermon  on  the  divine  goodness,  which,  while 
it  denied  the  possibility  of  any  punishment,  except 
for  the  good  of  the  offender  or  of  others,  certainly 
urged  the  argument  to  a  length  and  with  an  eager- 
ness, which  could  not  but  shake  all  serious  dread 
of  future  retribution.     Still,  when  he  was  publicly 


32  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

charged  by  Cleaveland  of  Ipswich,  with  denying 
its  eternity,  he  turned  upon  his  adversary  with  a 
copious,  and  not  wholly  unmerited  invective,  and 
called  him  to  witness  that  he  had  employed  the 
very  words  of  scripture,  "  eternal "  and  "  ever- 
lasting." 

The  son  of  Cotton  Mather,  who  long  after  wrote 
against  the  doctrine  of  a  final  and  universal  resto- 
ration, Lowell  of  Newburyport,  Prentice  of  Charles- 
town,  and  Tucker  of  Newbury,  were  the  next 
preachers  before  the  Convention.  Tucker  had  just 
been  accused  of  heterodoxy  by  some  of  his  pa- 
rishioners ;  and,  indeed,  when  he  spoke  of  being 
"  prepared,  by  a  penitent  return  to  duty,  for  the 
pardoning  mercy  of  God  by  Jesus  Christ,"  he  dis- 
played no  anxiety  to  shun  the  charge  of  attributing 
even  forgiveness  rather  to  man  and  his  return  to 
duty,  which  were  to  precede,  than  to  the  Mediator, 
and  that  mercy  through  him  which  was  to  follow. 
In  1766,  Mayhew  was  removed  in  his  prime ; 
Cuming,  who  had  succeeded  Prince,  had  died  yet 
earlier  in  life  ;  the  younger  Checkley  died  also  in 
1768  ;  Foxcroft  and  Sewall,  within  one  fortnight, 
in  1769,  and  before  the  end  of  the  same  year,  the 
elder  Checkley.  Except  Mayhew,  these  had  been 
men  of  like  mind  and  of  the  ancient  school ;  and 
the  more  penetrating  minds  among  the  theologians 
of  New  England  looked  not  without  anxiety  for 
the  results  of  such  vacancies.  Hopkins  of  Great 
Barrington,  the  acute  founder  of  a  system,  had 
arraigned  the  doctrines  of  Mayhew  during  his 
lifetime,  but  had  extorted  no  reply.     He  says,  in 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    BNGLAK1X  33 

1768,  that  he  preached  a  sermon  at  the  Old  South 
Church,  "  under  a  conviction  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  divinity  of  Christ  was  much  neglected,  if  not 
disbelieved,  by  a  number  of  the  ministers  in  Bos- 
ton/'' The  successor  of  Mayhew  was  Howard, 
who  trod  gently  in  his  steps,  and  against  whom 
Croswell  publicly  aimed  the  charge  of  Arianism. 
The  younger  Checkley  was  succeeded  by  John 
Lathrop;  and  two  years  after  the  death  of  Sewall, 
two  pastors,  Bacon  and  Hunt,  were  settled  over  the 
Old  iSouth  Church,  on  the  same  day.  Amongst 
all  the  clergy  of  Boston,  immediately  before  the 
Revolution,  there  was  not  one  commanding  in- 
tellect, except  that  which  still  glowed  in  the  hoary 
age  of  Chauncy. 

The  public  mind  was  overshadowed  and  agi- 
tated by  the  tokens  of  the  national  struggle  which 
was  approaching  from  afar.  While  the  clergy 
were  more  than  enough  enkindled  with  political 
zeal,  the  people  had  little  leisure  for  discussions  of 
less  immediate  urgency.  A  frost  settled  upon  the 
pulpit,  except  when  a  patriotic  warmth  had  mount- 
ed so  high  ;  and  the  love  of  civil  liberty  even  en- 
couraged the  habit  of  regarding  forms  of  doctrine 
as  a  hateful  restraint.  Almost  all  of  the  published 
sermons  of  that  day,  indeed,  acknowledge  in  some 
manner  the  atonement ;  and  a  very  large  proportion 
of  them  contain  language  which  not  even  a  Semi- 
Arian  could  utter.  The  sagacious  West,  the  antag- 
onist of  Edwards  and  Hopkins,  asks  in  1764,  how 
any  man  "  can  imagine  that  he  faithfully  preaches 
Christ,  who  very  seldom  in  his  discourses  men- 
3* 


34  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

tions  his  name ;  and  who  never  insists  on  the  doc- 
trine of  the  atonement,  with  which  the  New  Testa- 
ment so  much  abounds  ?  "  Foster,  of  Stafford,  in 
1770,  violently  opposed  the  term,  <;  total  depravity," 
and  openly  condemned  Supralapsarians  and  Sub- 
lapsarians  alike.  Some  years  afterwards,  he  con- 
tended that  man  is  placed,  by  the  gospel,  under  a 
new  and  inferior  law  of  obedience ;  a  doctrine 
which  drew  an  answer  from  Buckminster.  But 
Foster  was  still  an  explicit  Trinitarian,  and  em- 
ploys the  most  emphatic  language  to  describe  the 
humiliation  of  the  Saviour :  "  Behold  the  Ancient 
of  days,  the  Father  of  eternity,  pursuant  to  the 
divine  counsel,  leaving  the  realms  of  bliss  and 
everlasting  day,  and  becoming  an  infant  of  a  span 
long  for  you!"  Minds  less  confused  than  his, 
refused,  however,  to  bind  themselves  by  any  very 
distinct  statements  of  doctrines.  President  Locke 
delivered,  in  1772,  one  of  the  most  dry,  liberal,  and 
philosophical  addresses,  which  was  ever  preceded 
by  a  text ;  and,  speaking  of  our  Lord  as  "  coming 
down,  a  ray  of  his  Father's  glory,"  he  declared, 
however,  that  "  Christians  were  far  from  agreeing 
how  to  settle  the  canon  of  fundamentals."  This 
example  of  Locke  as  a  moral  preacher,  might  have 
been  more  persuasive,  had  he  sustained  the  repu- 
tation of  a  moral  man,  when,  soon  after,  he  with- 
drew from  the  academic  chair.  Langdon,  the 
succeeding  president,  though  once  charged  with 
Arianism,  yet  always  declared  himself  a  Trini- 
tarian, and  was  a  Calvinist  after  the  model  of  the 
synod  of  Dort. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  35 

Morehead,  of  the  Federal  Street  Church,  died  in 
1773,  and  had  no  successor  till  after  the  Revolution. 
Byles,  of  the  Hollis  Street  Church,  followed  his 
son,  the  rector  of  Christ  Church,  to  the  provinces 
which  observed  their  loyalty.  In  1775,  the  dis- 
mission of  Bacon,  and  the  death  of  Hunt,  left  the 
Old  South  Church  for  several  years  without  a 
pastor.  The  Summer  Street  Church,  too,  was 
vacant  almost  till  the  close  of  hostilities.  Pember- 
ton  died  also  in  1777 ;  and  Eliot,  who  had  re- 
mained in  Boston  during  the  blockade,  survived 
him  but  a  year.  Wight  was  elected  to  the  pulpit 
of  Byles  ;  Clarke  became  the  colleague  of  Chaun- 
cy  ;  Eckley,  in  1779,  was  ordained  over  the  Old 
South  Church,  which  then  worshipped  in  King's 
Chapel ;  and  John  Eliot  very  naturally  succeeded 
his  father.  During  the  war,  the  voice  of  religion, 
however  strong  in  private  breasis,  could  not  often 
rise  on  the  air  above  the  thunders  of  battle.  In 
1785,  the  number  of  parishes  in  Boston  was  actu- 
ally less  than  half  a  century  before.  The  successor 
of  Cooper,  in  Brattle  street,  was  Thacher,  whose 
fervid  eloquence,  while  he  was  yet  almost  a  boy, 
had  won  the  admiration  of  Whitefield. 


PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 


CHAPTER   V. 

At  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  while  the  future 
constitution  of  American  society  was  yet  unsettled, 
no  master-mind  was  active  amongst  the  theolo- 
gians of  New  England.  The  elder  Edwards  was 
long  since  departed ;  the  younger  never  held  the 
sceptre  of  his  father;  Chauncy  was  sinking  into 
the  grave ;  Dwight  was  still  very  young ;  Stiles 
lavished  considerable  strength  on  a  heterogeneous 
multitude  of  topics  ;  and  if  Hopkins  and  Bellamy 
still  swayed  a  rising  and  an  extensive  school,  it 
was  probably  more  through  the  absence  of  other 
leaders,  than  through  the  felicity  of  their  own  pow- 
ers or  system.  At  such  a  time  it  was  that  an 
Unitarian  congregation  was  first  known  in  Amer- 
ica. The  war,  dispersing  the  officers  of  the  British 
government,  had  left  but  a  handful  of  the  worshippers 
at  King's  Chapel.  After  it  had  been  closed  for 
some  time,  it  was  for  five  years  lent  to  the  Old 
South  congregation,  banished  as  they  were  from 
their  desecrated  edifice.  Its  ministers,  who  had 
fled,  returned  no  more  ;  and  though  an  Episcopal 
Church,  it  was,  of  course,  without  episcopal  super- 
vision. Seven  years  of  confusion  had  gone  by, 
when  the  remnant  of  the  people,  increased  by  some 
accessions  of  such  as  had  purchased  pews  of  late, 
but  were  not  familiar  with  the  system  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church,  fixed  their  eyes  upon  James  Freeman, 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  37 

a  student  of  much  promise,  and  employed  him  to 
read  the  liturgy.  He  was  attached  to  the  ritual, 
but  had  yet  to  frame  his  theological  opinions.  He 
gave  himself  to  the  current  of  free  investigation  ; 
and  no  ecclesiastical  authority  restrained  his  pro- 
gress, or  menaced  him  with  public  annoyance. 
Some  changes  in  the  Common  Prayer  were  re- 
quired by  the  change  in  political  relations  ;  and, 
after  a  time,  Freeman  avowed  his  wish  to  change, 
with  these,  those  parts  in  which  the  Trinity  was 
acknowledged.  Although  his  manner  was  bad,  he 
had  taste  and  talent,  and  great  frankness  of  char- 
acter, and  had  acquired  the  regard  of  the  congre- 
gation. If  Clarke  be  excepted,  he  was  probably 
the  ablest  man  who  then  occupied  the  desk  in 
Boston.  Doubts  like  his  own  had  been  at  least 
encouraged  by  Chauncy  and  Mayhew ;  it  was,  in 
the  judgment  of  many,  one  of  those  questions  "of 
the  manner  of  the  divine  substance,"  which,  like 
Andrew  Eliot,  most  of  the  Congregational  clergy 
of  the  capital  seemed  willing  to  destine  to  a  dis- 
creet silence  ;  for  Freeman  was  ready,  with  them, 
to  employ  all  the  words  and  phrases  of  Scripture. 
By  a  vote  of  twenty  to  seven,  the  proprietors  of  the 
chapel  adopted  the  ritual  with  his  proposed  altera- 
tions. He  asked  in  vain  for  orders  from  the  new 
bishops  of  the  United  States;  and  in  1787,  the 
wardens  proceeded  deliberately,  and  with  a  kind 
of  laying  on  of  hands  to  a  kind  of  ordination, 
against  which  seventeen  protested.  From  this 
time,  Unitarianism  became  a  substantial  reality  in 
Boston. 


38       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

In  the  same  year,  Chauncy  had  departed;  and 
Belknap  had  been  installed  over  the  Federal  Street 
Church.  Wight  was  dismissed  in  1788,  and  West 
was  his  successor.  In  1790,  extracts  from  the 
book  of  Emlyn  were  republished  at  Boston  ;  and 
Alexander,  of  Mendon,  prepared  an  elaborate  an- 
swer. At  this  period,  most  of  the  sermons  and 
charges  at  ordinations  comprised  some  allusion  to 
the  Trinity,  to  the  divinity  of  Christ,  or  at  least  to 
the  atonement  and  to  eternal  retribution.  But  the 
Hopkinsian  theologians,  at  whose  head  Emmons 
of  Franklin,  with  his  clear  pen,  was  now  taking 
his  place,  had  so  remoulded  the  system  of  Calvin, 
that  while  they  seemed  to  themselves  to  glide  over 
its  harshness,  they  terribly  shocked  the  religious 
sensibilities  of  mankind.  With  whatever  satisfac- 
tion the  calm  student  in  their  metaphysical  divinity 
might  contemplate  some  of  its  lucid  outlines,  it 
could  not  supplant,  in  the  pulpit  and  in  private 
discourse,  the  living  glow  of  scriptural  appeal  and 
instruction,  without  swelling,  far  and  wide,  the 
popular  disgust  which  would  one  day  become  a 
formidable  and  almost  irreconcilable  foe.  Men 
could  not  hear  with  complacency,  instead  of  the 
gospel,  discussions  of  the  questions,  whether  the 
Almighty  was  not  the  author  of  sin  ;  whether  a 
saint  could  not  so  far  submit  his  own  will  to  the 
divine  will  as  to  consent  to  lose  his  own  soul ; 
whether  any  promise  was  given  to  the  prayers  of  the 
unregenerate.  The  very  discussion  of  such  themes, 
which  were  older  than  the  Hopkinsians,  distracted 
many  a  community  that  would  gladly  have   lis- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  39 

tened  to  the  most  solemn  truths  of  the  Bible,  and 
heaped  up,  almost  everywhere,  a  mass  of  prejudice, 
which  Mbode  its  time." 

IJut  the  clergy  of  Boston,  and  many  of  their  re- 
moter brethren,  presented  no  such  repulsive  doc- 
trine. Fifty  years  were  now  complete  since  the 
first  visit  of  Wbitcficld  ;  and  could  another  White- 
field  have  passed  that  way,  not  only  his  burning 
eloquence  and  unrestrained  zeal,  but  the  very 
themes  of  which  he  loved  to  speak,  would  have 
come  upon  the  startled  congregations  like  a  tem- 
pest upon  some  calm  lake,  with  its  glassy  expanse. 
The  same  towers  and  spires,  indeed,  still  looked 
down  upon  the  generation  of  republicans,  which 
had  looked  down  upon  the  squadrons  that  watched 
a  province.  Only  the  churches  in  Brattle  street 
and  Hollis  street  had  been  rebuilt;  and  while  one 
or  two  congregations  had  ceased  to  exist,  the  chapel 
once  built  for  the  worship  of  the  peculiar  servants 
of  royalty,  had  been  ranged  with  the  tabernacles  of 
the  Puritans.  But  a  Whitefield  had  now  found 
no  Foxcroft,  or  Gee,  or  Colman,  or  Sewall,  or 
Prince  ;  and  scarcely  even  the  doctrine,  with  the 
hostility,  of  Chauncy.  How  much,  indeed,  the 
system  of  their  fathers  had  yielded  to  a  riper 
knowledge  of  the  Scriptures,  to  the  freer  march  of 
reason,  to  the  caprice  of  innovation,  or  to  the  neu- 
tralizing deadness  of  the  spirit  of  doubt,  no  eye 
could  discover.  It  was  a  process  of  which  the  ex- 
tent was  known  only  in  private  circles  or  private 
bosoms.  The  pulpit  taught  chiefly  those  general 
lessons  of  upright  practice,   founded    upon  those 


40  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

general  truths  of  natural  religion,  and  those  gen- 
eral  facts  of  the  evangelical  history,  which  had 
never  been  questioned  by  any  who  bore  the  Chris- 
tian name,  and  which  alone  had  been  heard  from 
so  many  divines  of  the  English  Church,  during  so 
much  of  that  century.  But  the  minister  of  the 
English  Church  had  still  read  a  liturgy,  which 
distinctly  announced  to  the  people  the  doctrines 
from  which,  as  an  honest  man,  he  could  not  in  the 
theory  have  departed,  without  forsaking  his  office. 
The  only  liturgical  form  which  could  fasten  such 
a  restraint  on  the  liberal  ministers  of  New  Eng- 
land, was  the  doxology  at  the  close  of  the  service  ; 
and  this  was  so  inconsiderable  a  part,  that  the 
custom  might  easily  cease  without  notice,  and 
even  without  motive,  through  an  accidental  omis- 
sion, which  might  grow  into  an  usage,  or  through 
the  mere  taste  of  the  musical  performers.  In 
prayers,  he  but  uttered  his  own  language ;  in 
preaching,  he  chose  his  own  topics  ;  he  disclaimed 
and  disdained  the  shackles  of  uninspired  forms  of 
doctrine  ;  and,  sustained  by  a  widespread  ardor 
for  liberty  of  conscience,  he  declined  meeting  the 
cross-examination  of  the  obtrusive.  For  the  charge 
of  heresy,  though  it  were  true,  he  had  furnished  no 
foundation  ;  and  he  had  furnished  as  little  for  the 
praise  of  orthodoxy.  ]f,  now  and  then,  some 
bolder  expression  startled  the  ear  of  a  watchful 
sentinel,  and  spread  for  a  moment  an  alarm  or  a 
suspicion  of  treason,  in  the  next  hour  the  broad 
banner  of  the  Scriptures  was  unfurled,  the  words 
of  the    Scriptures   were  proclaimed  abroad;  and 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  41 

who  could  ask  for  more  ?  Even  now,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  the  theology  of  those  divines  may  be 
misinterpreted  ;  but  if  it  should  be,  they  but  pay 
the  penalty  of  a  position  so  close,  so  cautious,  and 
so  indecisive. 

As  early  as  1789,  Freeman,  whose  attitude  gave 
boldness  to   the  doubts   of  others,  could   say  in    a 
letter  to   Belsham,  the  English  leader  of  Socinian- 
ism,  that  there  were  "  many  churches  in  which  the 
worship  was  strictly  Unitarian."     The  community 
and  the  clergy  felt  that  the   opposite  doctrine  was 
shaken  ;  but  where,  how  far,  in  what  minds,  and 
in  what  congregations,  could   only  be  determined 
by  observing  accurately  silence  as  well  as  language. 
"  Individuals,   both  clergymen  and  laymen,"  says 
one  of  their  advocates,  "  were  satisfied    writh   the 
discreet  enjoyment  of  their  opinions,  while    they 
were  not  called  to   profess  any  thing  contrary  to 
them  ;  "  and  there  was  not  one  of  the  ministers  of 
Boston,   who   had   the   firmness  of   heart  and  the 
distinctness  of  faith,  which  might  have  urged  him, 
as  a  friend  or  foe  to  change,  to   hasten  its  devel- 
opement.     The  oldest  pastor,  Howard,  went  down 
into  the  vale  of  years  "  neither  a   Calvinist,"  said 
Freeman,    "  nor    a   Trinitarian."      Lathrop    spoke 
with  significance  when  he   said,   "  the   sayings  of 
the  prophets  and  of  the  apostles,  and  especially  of 
Jesus,   demand    assent ;    but    not   the    sayings   of 
Calvin    or    Arminius,  nor   of    Saint    Athanasius." 
Eckley  was   earnest   in   heart,  but   of  a   mild  and 
tolerant  temper;  and,  while  he  held  the  other  doc- 
trines of  the  ancient  system,  hesitated  to  affirm  the 
4 


42       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

absolute  equality  of  the  Son  with  the  Father.  The 
yielding,  if  not  contradictory  words  of  Thacher 
were  like  the  courtesy  of  Glaucus  to  Diomed ;  an 
exchange  of  the  golden  armor  of  revealed  doctrine 
for  the  brazen  shield  and  helmet  of  accidental 
opinion.  "  For  myself,"  said  he,  "  I  can  say  that 
I  believe  the  true  and  proper  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ;  the  awful  depravity  of  human  nature;  the 
necessity  of  regeneration  and  of  the  agency  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  in  effecting  the  change  ;  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  our  own  works  to  justify  us  in  the  sight 
of  God ;  our  acceptance  with  him  only  on  account 
of  the  merits  and  atonement  of  the  Son  of  God ; 
the  necessity  of  holiness  in  heart  and  life,  in  order 
to  fit  us  for  heaven ;  and  the  utter  futility  of  the 
hope  that,  in  the  future  state,  we  shall  have  the 
opportunity  of  rectifying  the  mistakes  as  to  our  own 
religious  character,  which  we  make  in  the  present. 
I  could  easily  declare  these,  I  say,  to  be  doctrines 
which  I  esteem  to  be  clearly  revealed  in  the  word 
of  God,  and  necessary  to  be  plainly  preached  by 
any  minister  who  wishes  to  do  his  duty;  but  great 
and  good  men,  men  much  greater  and  better  than 
I  am,  have  materially  differed  from  me  in  their 
ideas  upon  these  subjects."  Well  might  the  cause 
of  orthodoxy  exclaim,  while  it  was  thus  modestly 
upheld  for  himself,  and  abandoned  for  mankind, 

"  Non  tali  auxilio,  nee  defensoribus  istis !  " 

Although  it  was  said  of  Eliot,  that  in  his  youth, 
when  he  was  invited  to  become  assistant  to  the 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  43 

Rector  at  Halifax,  he  "fully  approved  the  doctrines 
and  views  of  the  Episcopalians,"  and  after  his 
death,  that  he  "  was  far  from  considering  all  opin- 
ions concerning  the  mysteries  of  Christianity  alike 
innocent  or  safe,"  and  was  "  remote  from  each  of 
the  extremes  in  systematic  theology ; "  yet  this 
was  said  when  one  of  these  extremes  had  been 
wonderfully  removed,  in  the  community  in  which 
he  lived,  beyond  that  negative  sphere,  where  shone 
his  favorite  authors,  "  Erasmus,  Le  Clerc,  and  es- 
pecially Jortin."  Clarke  was  a  man  of  elegant 
powers  and  close  study.  His  publications  afford 
no  token  of  his  belief,  beyond  the  most  elementary 
doctrines  ;  but  he  was  viewed  as  the  head  of  a 
party  which  was  moving  steadfastly  though  quietly 
onward.  Everett  was  less  eminent,  but  espoused 
the  latitudinarian  side  ;  and  in  1792  retired  to  sec- 
ular occupations.  West  had  been  educated  in 
Calvinism  ;  but  it  is  said  that  in  his  later  years  he 
was  not  entirely  the  same  ;  and  the  changes  of  that 
day  were  mostly  in  one  direction.  Belknap  had 
published  in  1779,  when  he  was  minister  of  Dover, 
a  sermon,  in  which  he  spoke  of  the  Saviour  as 
"  that  glorious  and  exalted  being,  who  was  in  the 
form  of  God,  who  was  in  the  beginning  with  God, 
and  (by  virtue  of  the  most  perfect  and  intimate  union 
of  the  whole  Deity  to  him)  was  God  ;  "  and  of  his 
pre-existent  state  as  "  a  state  of  entire  union  with 
God,  and  perfect  happiness  resulting  therefrom;" 
but  when  in  1792,  the  sermon  was  republished  at 
Boston  for  general  circulation,  these  latter  words, 
and  those  in  parenthesis,  were  omitted. 


44       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

It  would  be  very  unjust  to  suppose  that  Unita- 
rianism,  as  a  distinct  form  of  belief  or  negation, 
was  held  and  concealed  by  a  large  company  of 
the  pastors  of  Boston  and  of  Massachusetts.  They 
were  within  the  region  where  the  atmosphere  of 
doubt  hung  thick  and  heavy.  So  often  had  they 
assured  themselves  and  mankind  that  good  men 
might  differ,  and  that  freedom  of  thought  must  not 
be  fettered,  as  at  length  to  have  lost  the  sense  of 
the  perfect,  absolute  certainty  of  any  interpretation 
or  of  any  truth  declared  by  such  interpretation. 
But  if  it  were  not  certain,  it  would  not  be  infinitely 
important ;  and  thus,  that  which  in  all  ages  had 
been  deemed  the  foundation  of  Christian  faith  and 
hope,  was  left  in  doubt  and  dimness,  to  the  mere 
chances  of  a  popular  opinion,  from  which  the  ap- 
pointed guides  withheld  its  due  instruction.  Had 
there  but  been  a  class  of  divines,  nay,  had  there 
been  but  one  high,  earnest  and  eloquent  mind,  that, 
while  estranged  from  the  metaphysics  of  Edwards 
and  Hopkins,  and  careless  of  Calvinism,  "  the 
name  and  the  thhig  "  alike,  had  firmly  upheld  and 
fervently  preached  the  doctrines  which  all  Christen- 
dom honored ;  nay,  had  even  a  Dwight,  without 
his  magisterial  mien,  been  found  amongst  the 
clergy  of  Massachusetts,  the  wave  of  innovation 
might  probably  have  ebbed  into  its  accustomed 
channel ;  the  spirit  of  doubt  might  have  departed 
with  its  mists ;  and  the  rock  of  revelation  might 
have  been  seen  and  felt,  as  unshaken  as  ever. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  45 


CHAPTER    VI. 

In  the  Convention  sermon  of  1793,  Barnard,  of 
Salem,  admitted  a  difference  amongst  the  clergy. 
Coldly  and  calmly,  he  required  that  no  condemna- 
tion should  be  pronounced  ;  and,  as  if  to  throw  off 
from  all  a  possible  imputation  of  assenting  to  So- 
cinianism,  he  ventured  to  introduce  the  Redeemer 
as  speaking,  and  as  saying,  "  I  left  the  high  honors 
and  enjoyments  of  my  Father's  presence."  But 
upon  the  shores  of  Plymouth,  Robbins  still  preach- 
ed the  ancestral  faith ;  and  when  he  was  called,  in 
1794,  to  stand  before  his  brethren,  he  determined 
not  to  descend  to  the  grave,  without  having  lifted 
on  high  the  banner  which  the  Pilgrims  had  trans- 
mitted to  his  hands.  He  spoke,  though  not  too 
boldly,  of  depravity,  of  the  atonement,  and  of 
Christ,  "  in  the  most  unequivocal  sense,  the  true 
God  and  eternal  life."  It  was  in  that  year  that 
Priestley  landed  in  America ;  but  he  came  not  to 
Boston,  and  his  presence  would  scarcely  have  been 
desired  by  a  single  pastor ;  for  his  daring  frankness 
and  his  extreme  opinions  might  easily  have  been 
fatal  to  the  gentle  harmony  which,  at  whatever 
price,  all  seemed  most  studious  to  preserve.  It 
was  in  the  same  year  that  Kirkland  was  ordained 
over  the  Summer-street  Church  ;  and  his  father,  a 
venerable   missionary,   thus   charged    him    in    the 

presence  of  the  people,  in  words  which  may  often 
4* 


46       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

have  rung  in  his  ear  :  "  O  never  rob  him  of  his 
glory,  who  is  God-man,  Mediator ;  never  deny  the 
Lord  who  hath  bought  you!" 

A  little  while  after  the  arrival  of  Priestley,  Free- 
man wrote  to  Belsham,  that  he  was  "  acquainted 
with  a  number  of  ministers,  particularly  in  the 
southern  part  of  Massachusetts,  who  avowed  and 
publicly  preached  the  Unitarian  doctrine  ; "  while 
others,  "more  cautious,  contented  themselves  with 
leading  their  hearers,  by  a  course  of  rational  and 
prudent  sermons,  gradually  and  insensibly,  to  em- 
brace it."  "  The  people,"  he  added,  though  he  did 
not  quite  approve  this  method,  wrere  "  kept  out  of 
the  reach  of  false  opinions,  and  prepared  for  the 
impressions  which  would  be  made  on  them  by 
more  bold  and  ardent  successors,  who  would  prob- 
ably be  raised  up  when  these  timid  characters  were 
removed  off  the  stage."  So  sagacious  a  prophet 
was  doubtless  an  accurate,  even  if  a  sanguine, 
observer. 

Belknap,  in  the  Convention  sermon  of  1796, 
still  speaks  of  "  the  Holy  Spirit,  with  Ids  powerful 
influence  ;  "  an  expression,  however,  which  some- 
times appears  in  the  discourses  of  those  who  can 
hardly  have  believed  the  distinct  personality  of  the 
Comforter.  He  "  silently  adores,"  too,  "  that  tre- 
mendous justice  which  suffers  so  many  unhappy 
souls  to  plunge  themselves  into  the  misery  of  the 
future  world."  In  1797,  Tappan  delivered  the 
discourse  ;  who,  five  years  before,  had  succeeded 
Wigglesworth,  in  the  Divinity  Professorship  at 
Cambridge,  and  who,  to  clearness   of  thought  and 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND, 


47 


eloquence  of  style,  added  the  fervor  of  a  pious 
heart,  and  the  steadfastness  of  a  faith  that  saw  in 
the  "  proper  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  rock  of  his 
eternal  life/'      A  few  weeks  before  the  meeting  of 

1798,  Clarke,  in  the  midst  of  a  sermon  on  "  the 
Holy  One  who  inhabiteth  the  praises  of  Israel," 
dropped  down,  smitten  with  fatal  apoplexy.  He 
was  but  forty-two ;  and  the  "  unfeigned  piety  and 
active  goodness"  of  his  life  were  commemorated 
in  the  Convention  sermon  by  Osgood,  of  Medford, 
a  divine  who  adhered  to  the  orthodox  creed,  but 
with  determined  mildness.  A  few  weeks  after, 
Belknap,  whose  historical  labors  adorned  his  coun- 
try, and  whose  published  discourses  have  a  correct 
and  solemn  tone,  was  struck  down  by  a  blow  al- 
most   as  sudden.     In   the    Convention   sermon  of 

1799,  a  warm  tribute  to  his  memory  was  paid  by 
the  aged  Forbes,  of  Gloucester,  who,  while  he  dis- 
played an  aversion  to  other  forms  of  doctrine  than 
the  Scriptures,  and  a  desire  to  divest  religious  truth 
of  mystery,  yet  alluded  to  "  the  divine,  the  human, 
and  the  mediatorial  character  "  of  One,  "  in  whom 
alone  these  characters  could  be  united." 

From  time  to  time,  some  voice  was  heard,  utter- 
ing what  many  feared,  or  hesitated,  to  believe. 
Single  ministers  called  out,  to  admonish  all  of  the 
rapid  current,  which,  without  a  breath  of  air,  was 
wafting  them  away.  Leonard  Worcester,  a  printer 
of  Worcester,  who  had  vainly  attempted  to  lead 
Bancroft  into  a  controversy  on  doctrine,  was  not 
afraid  to  say  in  1795,  that  "  Socianianism  or  Arian- 
ism   had,   very  extensively  if  not  very  generally, 


48       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

taken  the  place  of  Arminianism."  Much,  indeed, 
of  the  Arminianism  of  the  times  had  left  so  poor  a 
station  in  its  system  for  the  office  of  a  Redeemer, 
that  the  mind  thus  prepared,  might  easily  start  with 
wonder  at  the  dazzling  majesty  with  which  the 
common  doctrine  invested  his  person.  But  when 
Emerson,  in  1799,  succeeded  Clarke  at  the  oldest 
church  in  Boston,  the  advanced  guard  of  innova- 
tion was  pushed  forward.  Emerson  was  a  pleas- 
ing writer,  and  filled  his  station  gracefully ;  but 
his  mind  was  prepared  distinctly  to  decry  and  de- 
ride the  Trinitarian  theology,  and  his  rhetoric 
seems  scarcely  to  have  touched,  as  it  skimmed 
along,  the  surface  of  revelation.  The  Convention 
sermon  of  1800  was  by  Lathrop,  of  Boston,  the 
constant  champion  of  freedom  from  formulas  of 
faith.  That  of  1801,  by  Dana,  of  Newburyport, 
was  unequivocally  orthodox.  Almost  the  last  of 
the  "  charming  accents "  of  Thacher,  were  heard 
in  that  of  1802 ;  for  in  a  few  months,  he  hastened 
to  a  milder  sky,  and  sank  into  the  grave. 

After  the  pulpit  of  Belknap  had  been  filled  for 
three  years  by  Popkin,  afterwards  the  Greek  Pro- 
fessor at  Cambridge,  the  year  1803  was  marked  by 
the  settlement,  in  their  stead,  of  William  Ellery 
Channing.  The  Federal-street  parish  was  then 
small ;  but  the  thoughtful,  fervid  eloquence  of  the 
preacher  soon  drew  an  admiring  and  devoted  as- 
sembly. With  a  delicate  frame  and  an  unpleasing 
countenance,  he  spoke  in  subdued  tones  and  in 
short  sentences,  that  singularly  blended  simplicity 
and   animation.       Meditative  habits  of  mind  had 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  49 

nourished  his  aspirations  for  the  happiness  of  man  ; 
and  consciousness  of  strength  breathed  boldness 
into  his  high  argument.  He  began  his  brilliant 
career,  the  pupil  of  that  undefined  Christianity 
which  then  reigned  around  him;  "  abstaining,"  as 
lie  afterwards  said,  "  most  scrupulously  from  every 
expression  which  could  be  construed  into  an  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  Trinity."  But  such  was  the 
unaccustomed  glow  of  the  doctrines  which  he 
could  proclaim,  when  they  came  from  his  lips,  that 
some  of  the  younger  and  more  zealous  hearers  of 
Eckley,  who  was,  at  that  time,  perhaps,  the  most 
orthodox  of  the  Boston  clergy,  withdrew  to  Fed- 
eral-street, imagining  that  the  faith  of  their  ances- 
tors was  rising  from  its  slumbers.  In  the  begin- 
ning of  1S05,  too,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
Buckminster  was  ordained  as  the  successor  of 
Thacher.  His  father,  the  excellent  minister  of 
Portsmouth,  was  a  devout  Calvinist ;  and  could 
not  but  remind  him,  when  he  preached  at  his  or- 
dination, though  but  in  a  passing  allusion,  how  he 
had  "  presented  him  at  the  baptismal  font,  and 
washed  him  in  the  name  of  the  sacred  Trinity." 
The  son,  whose  whole  ministry  was  accomplished 
before  the  age  at  which  many  men  have  just  com- 
pleted their  preparation,  gave  himself  to  the  breeze 
which  bore  on  his  elder  brethren  of  all  the  churches 
of  Boston,  in  such  a  tranquil  harmony.  All  that 
was  extraordinary  in  his  powers,  and  all  that  was 
beautiful  in  his  life,  was  added  to  the  dawning 
beams  of  that  day  of  supposed  illumination  which 
was  ready  to  break,  but  still  lingered,  on  the  moun- 
tains. 


50  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

For,  in  the  meanwhile,  Tappan,  the  honored 
Professor  of  Divinity  at  Cambridge,  had  died  in 
peace.  The  Professorship  remained  for  two  years 
unoccupied  ;  and  reflecting  men  perceived  that  the 
hour  of  conflict  was  certainly  approaching.  Hollis, 
the  founder,  a  London  merchant,  had  given  a  par- 
tial endowment  for  the  support  of  a  Professor  "  of 
sound,  orthodox  principles  ; "  and  was  himself  at 
once  a  Calvinist,  a  Baptist,  and  the  friend  of  a 
large  religious  liberty.  Of  the  five  Fellows  of  the 
College,  three  were  ministers ;  Lathrop,  Pearson 
and  Eliot.  The  choice  fell  upon  Ware,  of  Hing- 
ham,  a  divine  of  great  respectability  of  character, 
but  of  very  moderate  powers,  and  distinguished 
chiefly  by  his  supposed  and  undisclaimed  Unita- 
rianism.  The  right  to  examine  him  on  his  doc- 
trines, however,  was  denied  ;  and  these,  when  he 
was  questioned  by  a  member  of  the  Senate,  were 
not  distinctly  disclosed.  Indignation  could  no 
longer  be  restrained ;  Pearson  retired  from  his 
Professorship;  and  Spring,  of  Newburyport,  at 
once  published  two  sermons  on  the  self-existence 
of  Christ ;  in  which  he  openly  and  directly  assailed 
this  appointment,  as  a  violation  of  a  sacred  trust, 
and  a  most  perilous  triumph  of  heresy.  He  did 
not  exaggerate  its  importance.  From  that  day, 
the  continuance  of  union  among  the  churches  of 
the  Puritans  was  really  impossible ;  and  those  who 
would  not  at  once  cast  themselves  upon  the  sea  of 
strife  saw  the  waves  mounting  higher  and  higher 
with  every  year,  till  the  narrow  ground  on  which 
they  stood  was  abandoned  or  overwhelmed. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  51 

It  was  indeed  wonderful  thai,  by  a  kind  of  con- 
sent, the  gathering  storm  should  gather  so  silently. 
But  in  truth  the  parties  themselves  were  unpre- 
pared for  acts  of  decision,  which  must  estrange 
parish  from  parish,  neighbor  from  neighbor,  shake 
the  whole  system  of  the  commonwealth  to  its  foun- 
dations, rend  many  communities  asunder,  and 
bring  into  families  and  into  individual  hearts  a 
boundless  distress.  To  pause  was  natural,  and 
was  merciful ;  even  though  to  proceed  might  have 
been  martyrdom  for  principles.  Besides,  the  lib- 
eral divines  by  no  means  knew  the  strength  with 
which  they  could  stand  together,  should  a  separa- 
tion be  hastened.  Few  of  them,  probably,  had 
embraced  the  Socinian  doctrine;  and  these  might 
have  dreaded  that  a  wider  gulf  would  be  found 
between  themselves  and  the  Arians  or  Semi-arians, 
than  between  these  and  the  orthodox.  Had  the 
contest  been  brought  to  an  issue  on  the  ground  of 
the  atonement,  it  might  have  ended  in  an  utter 
overthrow  of  the  innovating  party.  They  were 
content  to  proceed  without  an  open  struggle  ; 
trusting  much  to  time  and  to  the  progress  of  the 
mind,  unincumbered  by  authority.  On  the  other 
side,  the  orthodox  were  somewhat  divided  by  the 
metaphysical  differences  between  the  main  body 
of  the  older  Calvinists  and  the  detachment  that 
followed  Hopkins.  Some  of  them,  too,  like  Lath- 
rop  of  West  Springfield,  now  for  half  a  century 
the  grave  and  sensible  minister  of  one  parish,  could 
not  well  bear  the  prospect  of  a  deadly  schism  be- 
tween churches  which  had  stood  side  by  side  from 


52       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

the  first  settlement  of  the  country.  Even  amongst 
the  orthodox,  the  jealousy  against  authoritative  de- 
termination in  doctrine  was  somewhat  excessive 
and  morbid.  They  were  not  without  hope  that 
the  steps  of  some  of  their  brethren  might  yet  be 
be  retraced.  They  had  not  the  experience  of  the 
succeeding  generation.  Some  of  them  were  prob- 
ably in  a  state  of  indecision  on  one  or  another 
question  which  might  become  the  test ;  so  that  a 
wide  controversy  might  throw  their  own  ranks  into 
an  unhappy  confusion.  Such  also  had  been  the 
prudence  of  their  adversaries,  that  exposed  and 
prominent  points  of  attack  were  not  numerous  : 
it  was  a  perilous  thing  to  be  unable  to  sustain  a 
serious  charge,  after  it  should  once  have  been  ad- 
vanced at  the  public  bar;  and,  if  prejudice  were 
once  thus  driven  to  the  side  of  error,  the  mischief 
must  be  far  more  disastrous.  With  mingled  hopes 
and  fears,  they  remained  almost  silent ;  but  on 
both  sides,  every  preparation  went  on. 


CHAPTER    VII. 


The  great  works  of  Horsley  and  Magee  had 
expelled  from  the  English  Church  most  of  the 
remnants  of  that  doubting  temper  which  had  once 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  53 

sprung  into  visible  existence.  These  works  had 
aed  the  sea,  us  soon,  at  least,  as  the  Unitarian 
volumes  which  were  presented  to  public  libraries, 
and  they  had  aided  to  sharpen  the  zeal  and  stir  the 
suspicions  of  those  who  knew  how  much  was  now 
at  hazard.  Not  a  single  book  had  yet  been  written 
against  the  Trinitarian  doctrine,  by  any  American 
pen,  except  the  treatise  on  the  atonement,  pub- 
lished in  1803,  by  Ballou,  the  Universalist  leader. 
The  minister  of  Mansfield  in  Connecticut,  whose 
name  was  Sherman,  now  published  his  disbelief 
in  the  Trinity  ;  and  was  deposed  by  his  brethren. 
Such  tidings  could  not  but  enkindle  still  more  the 
suppressed  indignation  of  such  a  man  as  Emerson  ; 
who,  at  the  head  of  the  oldest  church  in  the  capital 
of  New  England,  knew  well  that  he  was  open  to  a 
censure  as  stern  from  any  ecclesiastical  body  which 
should  represent  the  hereditary  theology.  A  pe- 
riodical publication,  called  the  Monthly  Anthology, 
was  at  that  period  just  commenced,  and  chiefly 
under  his  charge  ;  and  though  it  was  dedicated  to 
literature,  its  occasional  blows  at  orthodoxy  and  its 
habitual  praises  of  religious  liberality,  were  not  the 
less  effective.  On  the  death  of  Howard,  his  post 
was  supplied  by  Lowell.  The  Convention  sermon 
of  1806  was  preached  by  Lyman,  of  Hatfield,  who, 
on  the  Connecticut,  upheld  with  vigor  an  unyield- 
ing Calvinism,  and  who  now,  before  the  assembled 
clergy,  dared  to  speak  of  "  total  depravity,"  and  of 
Christ,  "essentially  God,  and  equal  with  the  Fath- 
er." An  orthodox  magazine,  the  Panoplist,  arose, 
and  for  many  years  did  faithful  service  to  the  cause 
5 


54       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

of  its  founders.  It  would  seem  that  the  sermon  of 
Lyman  had  been  resented  ;  for  the  next  preacher, 
Reed,  of  Bridge  water,  for  some  time  a  member  of 
Congress,  devoted  his  whole  discourse  to  a  heart- 
less inculcation  of  indifference  to  doctrine  ;  cen- 
suring, in  the  common  language  of  the  day,  the 
practice  of  "  anathematizing  others  on  account  of 
their  religious  opinions;"  while  he  denounced 
such  "  censorious  persons "  as  persecutors ;  and 
enforced  that  maxim,  so  happily  prepared  to 
equalize  all  truth  and  falsehood,  and  make  the 
reign  of  doubt  perpetual — that  "  we  should  re- 
member that  we  differ  from  our  adversary  as  much 
as  he  differs  from  us." 

Willard,  the  President  of  Harvard  College,  a 
man  of  moderate,  probably  of  moderately  ortho- 
dox, opinions,  died  before  the  election  of  Ware  to 
the  Divinity  Professorship.  His  successor,  Web- 
ber, a  mathematician,  had  those  views  which  Ware 
could  name  "  liberal  and  enlightened ;  "  and  dur- 
ing his  presidency  of  six  years  he  relinquished  the 
theological  influence  of  the  institution  to  his  more 
decided  and  zealous  associate.  But  a  mightier 
influence  was  arising  in  an  Essex  village.  Almost 
at  the  same  moment,  magnificent  schemes  of  boun- 
ty to  the  Church  of  Christ  were  formed  in  the  bo- 
soms of  several  persons  of  great  wealth,  in  New- 
buryport  and  the  neighboring  region.  A  few 
eminent  clergymen,  of  decided  Calvinism,  Dana, 
Spring,  Morse,  Pearson,  and  Woods,  were  their 
counsellors  ;  and  their  designs  at  length  centred  in 
the  foundation   of    the    Theological    Seminary  at 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND. 


55 


Andover,  with  a  princely  endowment,  for  which 
the  names  of  Bartlett,  Brown,  and  Phillips  will  be 
honored  with  those  of  Wykeham  and  the  "  Lady 
Margaret.''  It  sprung  into  flourishing  life  at  its 
very  birth  ;  and  the  muffled  step  of  the  innovating 
bands  felt  itself  compelled  to  halt,  as  if  it  had 
stumbled  all  at  once  on  the  unseen  outposts  of  a 
strong  battalion. 

There  were  several  landmarks,  whose  appear- 
ance continually  suggested  the  true  position  of  the 
parties.  The  creed  or  covenant  of  a  Congrega- 
tional church  may  be  changed  by  itself,  without 
counsel  or  publication  ;  and  sometimes  the  older 
covenants  had  been  so  rigidly  Calvinistic,  that  some 
change  might  have  been  approved  by  all  consider- 
ate Christians.  But  when  the  clergy  met  in  coun- 
cils, to  assist  in  the  ordination  of  a  brother,  the 
examination  of  his  faith,  which  custom  had  sanc- 
tioned and  conscience  might  require,  was  often 
discarded  as  an  encroachment  on  his  freedom  of 
doctrine  and  that  of  the  people  by  whom  he  had 
been  elected.  The  exchange  of  pulpits  brought 
the  same  topics  home,  with  the  same  earnestness, 
to  the  heart  of  the  sincere  believer  in  a  revealed 
system  of  doctrine.  To  demand  such  intercourse, 
without  offering  any  other  assurance  of  a  Christian 
faith  than  the  general  declaration  of  belief  in  the 
Scriptures,  was  a  claim  which  could  never  have 
been  made,  except  by  innovators  who  dreaded  too 
early  an  exposure  ;  and  could  never  be  granted, 
except  under  an  almost  desperate  determination  to 
sacrifice  all  for   peace.     It  was  not  granted  ;  but 


56  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

was  the  occasion  of  much  strife  for  years.  Still 
the  parties  met  and  mingled  at  the  summons  of 
other  churches,  with  which  their  own  had  held  he- 
reditary alliance.  When,  after  a  struggle,  the 
choice  of  the  Old  South  parish  fell  upon  the  mild 
and  conciliating  Huntington,  to  be  the  associate  of 
the  mild  and  conciliating  Eckley,  and  the  Church 
was  recovered  or  preserved  for  the  doctrines  of  its 
fathers,  Lathrop,  Channing  and  Lowell,  all  pub- 
licly united  in  the  act  of  ordination.  On  the  death 
of  West,  Holley,  a  brilliant  orator,  was  installed 
over  the  Hollis-street  Church,  and  Eckley  preached 
the  sermon.  The  second  Church  in  Dorchester 
invited  Codman,  a  young  clergyman  of  very  re- 
spectable connexions  and  independent  fortune  in 
Boston,  to  become  their  pastor.  Conscious  of  the 
nature  of  a  ground  which  might  soon  crumble  be- 
neath  his  feet,  he  said  that,  "  as  Arian  and  Socin- 
ian  settlements  had  of  late  years  crept  into  some 
of  our  churches,  he  thought  it  his  duty  to  declare 
that  he  believed  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost 
to  be  the  one  living  and  true  God,"  and  asked  that 
the  Psalms  and  Hymns  of  Watts  might  be  restored, 
instead  of  a  collection  which  excluded  the  doxolo- 
gies,  and  contained  expressions  derogatory  to  the 
Trinity.  His  conditions  were  accepted  ;  and  with 
this  advantage  he  assumed  a  post  at  which  he 
could  stand  for  the  defence  of  his  brethren.  At  his 
ordination,  he  presented  to  the  council  an  orthodox 
confession  of  his  faith;  while  the  sermon  was 
preached  by  Channing,  and  Buckminster,  Eckley, 
Osgood,  Harris  and  Lowell  performed  the  other 
portions  of  the  service. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  57 

In  the  Convention  sermon  of  1808,  Chaplin,  of 
Groton,  preached  "  the  Trinity  in  the  Unity  of  the 
Godhead."  But  an  important  movement  was  now 
added,  by  the  introduction  of  collections  of  hymns 
at  the  First  Church  and  the  Church  in  Brattle- 
street,  prepared  by  Emerson  and  Buckminster. 
The  collection  of  Belknap  had  superseded  the 
Psalms  and  Hymns  of  Watts  in  the  Boston 
churches ;  but  it  still  acknowledged  doctrines 
which  were  heard  no  more  from  the  pulpits.  With 
an  unsparing  hand,  at  whatever  cost  of  taste  or 
sense,  the  sacrificial  atonement,  the  deity  of  the 
Redeemer,  the  personality  of  the  Spirit,  and  the 
more  solemn  allusions  to  future  retribution,  were 
stricken  from  the  new  collection.  The  Panoplist 
called  on  Emerson,  it  called  on  Buckminster,  it 
called  on  all  the  liberal  divines,  if  they  disbelieved 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  to  oppose  to  it  an  open 
denial.  Its  call  was  unanswered,  or  answered 
with  the  reproach  of  uncharitableness.  But  within 
the  space  of  one  or  two  years  after  the  year  1808, 
more  Unitarian  publications  appeared  than  during 
the  whole  previous  period  since  the  settlement  of 
New  England.  Even  the  venerable  and  forbear- 
ing Lathrop,  of  West  Springfield,  was  so  much 
moved  that  he  pronounced  "  those  who  acknowl- 
edge Christ  as  a  teacher,  but  deny  him  as  a  Re- 
deemer sent  to  deliver  us  from  punishment  by  his 
death*,15  to  be  "justly  ranked  among  those  who 
bring  in  damnable  heresies."  A  few  men  of  zeal 
and  of  wealth  determined  to  fix  one  more  rallying 
point  for  the  strength  of  Orthodoxy  in  Boston, 
5* 


58  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

where  the  Congregational  churches  were  still  less 
numerous  than  when  the  population  was  feebler. 
They  organized,  in  1809,  the  church  in  Park- 
street  ;  and  its  tall  spire  soon  rose  in  the  heart  of 
the  city,  to  tell  the  commonwealth  that  innovation 
was  to  have  no  undisputed  triumph  in  its  capital. 
Cary,  the  assistant  of  Freeman,  in  his  first  ser- 
mon, suggesting  the  possibility  that  some  might 
ask  his  "  speculative"  opinions,  declared  that  they 
were  "really  of  too  little  consequence  "  to  be  men- 
tioned at  such  a  moment  of  harmony.  The  Im- 
proved New  Testament,  a  gross  attempt  of  some 
English  Socinians,  was  republished  at  Boston  in 
1809,  probably  under  the  patronage  of  Emerson  ; 
but  discretion  shrunk  from  espousing  its  intro- 
duction. Spring,  of  Newburyport,  preached  the 
Convention  sermon.  In  the  very  midst  of  a  throng 
of  apprehensions,  the  orthodox  Congregationists 
looked  up  to  the  eternal  hills  ;  consecrated  them- 
selves, as  it  were,  anew ;  and  founded,  for  the 
universal  propagation  of  the  gospel,  the  American 
Board  of  Foreign  Missions.  Two  ministers  of 
New  Hampshire,  in  the  mean  time,  Thomas  and 
Noah  Worcester,  pushed  before  the  community  a 
theory  of  their  own.  It  appeared  in  several  ser- 
mons and  pamphlets ;  especially  in  one  which  had 
the  appropriate  title  of  "  Bible  News."  It  taught 
that  the  Saviour  was  the  Son  of  God  in  the  same 
sense  throughout  in  which  men  are  the  sons  of 
their  fathers ;  was  constituted  the  Creator;  and  is 
the  object  of  divine  honors;  but  that  the  unity  of 
the  Father  is  still  absolute  and  supreme.     With  a 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  59 

doctrine  like  this,  Noah  Worcester,  one  of  those 
men  whose  abilities  are  just  sufficient  to  produce 
results  which  they  neither  design  nor  comprehend, 
shook  the  faith  of  one  of  his  contemporaries  ;  pre- 
pared the  march  of  stronger  and  bolder  thinkers ; 
and  then,  year  after  year,  bewailed  the  obduracy  of 
those  who  would  not  tranquilly  extend  to  him  the 
hand  of  fraternal  fellowship.  On  the  other  side, 
Abiel  Abbot,  minister  of  Coventry,  in  Connecticut, 
had  been  observed  by  some  of  his  hearers  to  omit 
all  mention  of  the  divinity  and  atonement  of  Christ, 
except  in  the  language  of  the  Scriptures ;  and 
when  he  had  been  questioned,  had  at  length 
avowed  his  disbelief.  After  some  delay,  he  was 
displaced  through  the  action  of  the  neighboring 
clergy  ;  and  the  General  Association  of  Connec- 
ticut published  their  opinion,  that  no  clergyman 
ought  to  exchange  ministerial  labors  with  any  man 
claiming  to  be  a  minister  of  Christ,  and  denying 
his  divinity.  Abbot  was  of  Massachusetts,  and 
his  friends  and  counsellors  were  there ;  so  that 
his  rejection  was  the  theme  of  much  and  severe 
comment. 

But  the  Park-street  meeting-house  having  been 
opened  at  the  beginning  of  1810,  with  the  avowal 
of  those  principles  which,  a  year  after,  began  to 
be  proclaimed  by  the  impassioned  and  sometimes 
incautious  eloquence  of  Griffin,  a  very  bold  man, 
placed  himself  in  the  front  of  the  liberal  party  for  a 
moment,  to  perform  an  act  of  signal  hardihood. 
Tnis  was  Porter,  of  Roxbury,  the  son  of  a  minister 
who  had   declared,  when   Whitefield   had  lost  his 


60  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

first  renown,  that  he  could  never  cease  to  honor 
and  bless  him,  since,  through  his  words,  he  him- 
self, although  before  a  Christian  preacher,  had 
been  drawn  to  the  true  waters  of  salvation.  The  son 
was  appointed  to  preach  the  Convention  sermon 
of  1810  ;  and  he  put  the  trumpet  to  his  mouth, 
and  blew  a  blast  of  defiance,  which  startled  many 
an  eye  from  its  slumbers.  His  theme  was  "  Chris- 
tian Simplicity,"  and  its  exposure  to  injury.  After 
naming  various  doctrines,  amonst  which  were 
"  Original  Sin,  a  Trinity  in  Unity,  the  mere  Hu- 
manity, super-angelic  Nature  or  absolute  Deity  of 
Christ,  and  the  absolute  Eternity  of  Punishment," 
he  proceeded  in  this  language:  "My  individual 
belief  in  respect  to  the  truth  or  error  of  these  points, 
can  be  of  but  little  importance,  and  my  subject  no 
way  requires  that  it  should  be  given.  It  rather 
becomes  me  to  follow  the  example  which  has  been 
sometimes  set  by  learned  judges  on  the  bench, 
when  difficult  questions  suggested  themselves,  but 
whose  decision  the  main  subject  before  them  did 
not  require,  and  prudently  say,  '  Neque  teneo,neque 
refel/o?  But  it  is  pertinent  to  the  object  of  this 
discourse,  and  consonant  to  my  serious  and 
deliberate  conviction,  to  observe,  that  I  cannot 
place  my  finger  on  any  one  article  in  the  list  of 
doctrines  just  mentioned,  the  belief  or  rejection  of 
which  I  consider  as  essential  to  the  Christian  faith 
or  character.  I  believe  that  an  innumerable  com- 
pany of  Christians,  who  never  heard  of  these  arti- 
cles, or  who  were  divided  in  their  opinion  respect- 
ing them,  have  fallen   asleep  in   Jesus  ;  and  that 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  61 

innumerable    persons  of  the  same   description  are 
following  after."     So  deliberate  an  utterance  of  so 

boundless  an  indifference  was  more  welcome,  per- 
haps, to  his  opponents,  than  to  many  of  his  asso- 
ciates. The  Panoplist  declared  that  "no  man  who 
opened  his  eyes  on  the  actual  state  of  things, 
doubted  the  efforts  by  a  few  in  the  heart  of  New 
England  to  establish  and  extend  Socinian  views.'' 
Dwight  did  not  hesitate  to  say  of  Boston  in  1S10, 
that  "  Unitarianism  seemed  to  be  the  predominating 
system."  It  was  distinctly  lifted  to  the  highest 
place  of  dignity,  when  in  that  year,  on  the  sudden 
death  of  Webber,  the  presidency  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege was  given  to  Kirkland,  a  fine  scholar,  affable 
and  graceful,  but  one  who  with  a  smile  could  erase 
whatever  was  mysterious  or  spiritual  from  his  re- 
ligion. He  began  his  academic  reign  by  attending 
a  ball  which  was  given  by  the  students.  Still  it 
was  true,  in  the  judgment  of  one  of  his  friends  of 
the  same  belief,  that  "  had  he  been  an  acknowl- 
edged defender  of  Unitarianism,  he  could  not  have 
been  elected  to  that  place." 


62       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

The  people  of  the  commonwealth  had  no  incli- 
nation to  abandon  substantially  the  religion  of  their 
ancestors.  Had  it  been  at  once  renounced,  so  far 
as  to  the  rejection  of  the  divinity  and  alonement  of 
the  Saviour,  the  mass  would  probably  have  arisen 
and  shaken  off  the  new  teachers.  But  the  love  of 
union,  quietness  and  good-will  would  permit  no 
such  exertion,  except  the  provocation  should  be 
distinct  and  intolerable.  Until  the  pastor  had 
spoken,  to  charge  him  with  heresy,  was  deemed 
calumnious  ;  and  few  or  none  had  yet  spoken. 
There  was  an  extensive  prejudice  against  the  stern- 
er features  of  Calvinism.  Men  were  slow  to  mark 
the  omissions  of  the  pulpit ;  and  when  they  drew 
attention  at  last  from  some  more  zealous  observer, 
the  rest,  perhaps,  would  no  longer  regret  the  defect 
to  which  they  were  completely  accustomed.  Both 
parties  even  now  might  recoil  from  the  gulf  of  di- 
vision. So  Puffer,  of  Berlin,  in  the  Convention 
sermon  of  1811,  while  he  praised  the  "  eternal  Son 
of  God,"  and  insisted  that  godliness  had  flourished 
or  declined  as  evangelical  principles  had  been 
maintained  or  forsaken,  yet  mourned  aloud  over 
the  dissensions  amongst  the  ministry. 

On  the  last  day  of  April,  1811,  Eckley  expired, 
at  the  the  age  of  threescore  and  one ;  a  fortnight 
after  died  Emerson,  twenty  years   younger ;  and 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  63 

on  the  third  day  after  his  death,   Samuel   Cooper 
Timelier,  the  son  of  the   late   Brattle-street  pastor, 
was  ordained   as  the   successor    of   Kirkland.      In 
1812,   after  many  attacks   of  epilepsy,   the  young 
and  winning  Buckminster  preceded   his   father  by 
a  single  day  in  his  entrance  within  the  vale   where 
truth  can  be  mistaken  no   longer.     At  this  period, 
William  Wells,  a  publisher  of  much  respectability, 
in  Boston^  and  a  correspondent  of  Belsham,  wrote 
that  "  the  tenets  of  Unitarianism   had   spread  very 
extensively    in    New    England  ;  that   most    of  the 
Boston   clergy  and   respectable  laity  were   Unita- 
rian ;  but  that  at  the  same  time  there  was  but  one 
church  professed///  Unitarian  ;  the  controversy  was 
seldom  introduced   into   the   pulpit;  and   the  ma- 
jority  of  those  who  were     Unitarians   were   such 
perhaps  without  consciousness."      The    letters  of 
Freeman   and    Wells  were   incorporated    by   Bel- 
sham   into   his  Life   of  Lindsay,  which   was   pub- 
lished in  1812;  yet,   almost  three  years  went  by 
before    a   copy   of  that  book   found  its   way    into 
hands  which   were  willing  to  give   it  publicity  in 
New  England.     In   1811,  the  Monthly  Anthology 
ceased  to  exist;  but  in  1812,  the   General   Reposi- 
tory was    begun    in    its    place  at    Cambridge.     It 
was  without   the  responsibility   of  clerical  editor- 
ship ;  and  it  pronounced  the  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 
ity   to    be    "  the    greatest    corruption    of    modern 
times." 

Other  bodies  of  Christians  were  not  asleep  ;  and 
Gardiner,  of  Trinity  Church,  and  Baldwin,  the 
most   eminent    of    the    Baptists,    printed    sermons 


64       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASLICAL 

which  were  designed  to  be  "  Preservatives  against 
Unitarianism."  The  contest  between  churches  and 
parishes  now  began.  Under  the  Congregational 
practice,  the  church,  so  far  as  it  could  act  in  a  cor- 
porate character,  was  composed  only  of  the  com- 
municants ;  who,  on  assenting  to  certain  articles  of 
faith  and  agreement,  and  affording  satisfactory  evi- 
dence of  their  sincerity,  had  each  been  received  to 
the  highest  ordinance  of  Christian  fellowship.  The 
parish  or  town  was  empowered  by  the  ancient  laws 
of  Massachusetts,  confirmed  by  the  bill  of  rights, 
to  choose  its  own  minister  ;  but  the  church  also  ex- 
ercised the  right  of  election.  In  both  bodies,  the 
same  person  was  commonly  designated  ;  and  when 
they  were  thus  in  harmony,  he  was  placed  in  office. 
Where  an  accidental  difference  occurred,  the  neces- 
sity of  peace  would  admonish  both  to  turn  to 
another  candidate.  The  more  devout  portion  of 
the  people  would,  of  course,  be  found  in  the 
church ;  but  it  might  still  happen  that  persons  of 
worth  and  conscientiousness  might  sometimes  be 
excluded  by  articles  of  faith,  so  minute  and  rigid, 
as  to  clash  with  their  convictions.  Such,  however, 
would  hardly  be  many ;  and  the  controversies 
which  were  commenced  were  not  those  of  devout 
men  claiming  the  admission  to  the  Lord's  table, 
which  was  denied  them  by  men  as  devout  but 
more  rigid  in  sentiment.  They  were  rather  strug- 
gles of  indifference  to  doctrine,  on  the  side  of  men 
too  little  in  earnest  to  desire  communion,  against 
that  firmness  with  which  the  pastor  and  the  more 
pious  of  his  congregation  felt  themselves  called  to 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  65 

contend  for  a  distinct  faith,  the  faith  of  revelation 
and  of  Christendom.  Codinan,  of  Dorchester,  first 
met  this  onset,  on  the  high  vantage-ground  which 
had  been  secured  by  his  avowal  at  his  settlement, 
and  which  was  still  further  strengthened  by  his  pe- 
cuniary independence.  He  had  hardly  been  estab- 
lished a  year  in  his  parish,  when  forty  of  his  par- 
ishioners expressed  their  disappointment  that  he 
had  not  indiscriminately  exchanged  his  ministerial 
services  with  the  Boston  clergy.  He  refused  all 
pledges,  and  was  at  first  sustained  by  a  majority 
of  his  parishioners  ;  but  when  the  minority  offered 
their  pews  for  sale,  the  desire  for  unity,  and  the 
temporal  interests  of  the  society  prevailed,  and  a 
vote  of  the  parish  asked  the  exchanges.  Again  the 
pastor  refused  to  abandon  his  control,  and  a  small 
majority  voted  to  extinguish  the  connection.  But, 
upheld  by  the  affectionate  attachment  of  a  large 
majority  of  the  parish,  and  by  almost  all  the  church, 
Codman  yielded  nothing.  A  council  wras  held, 
and  equally  divided,  for  the  obvious  reason  that  it 
was  drawn  equally  from  the  two  parties  ;  another, 
with  an  uneven  number,  and  with  Lathrop  of 
West  Springfield  at  its  head,  was  summoned  ;  and 
the  result  was,  that,  while  a  large  company  of  the 
parishioners  withdrew,  the  pastor  maintained  his 
place.  Less  happy  was  Burr,  of  Sandwich.  For- 
saking the  less  decided  theology  with  which  he 
had  begun  his  ministry,  he  preached  the  doctrines 
of  Calvinism  with  zeal ;  and  in  1811,  was  dismiss- 
ed by  a  vote  of  the  congregation.  One  sixth  of 
the  whole  number  of  his  church  concurred   in  the 


66  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

act,  while  the  others  separated  with  him,  built  a 
house  of  worship,  retained  the  name  of  the  First 
Church,  and  excluded  those  members  who  had  op- 
posed their  doctrine.  The  parish  invited  Goodwin 
to  the  ancient  pulpit,  a  Unitarian  and  an  advocate 
of  the  restoration  of  all  men;  and  the  title  and 
rights  of  the  original  church  remained  in  contest. 

While  these  events  were  in  progress,  the  charge 
of  Unitarianism  was  either  repelled  as  unjustifia- 
ble, or  borne  with  more  of  the  aspect  of  patience, 
than  with  that  of  exulting  illumination.  A  Socin- 
ian  publication  in  London  had  ventured  to  give  to 
the  world  some  statements  of  the  prevalence  of 
Unitarian  sentiments  in  Boston  and  in  Massachu- 
setts. Parkman,  a  young  divine  of  the  most  re- 
spectable connections  in  Boston,  happening  to  be 
in  London,  replied  to  the  article.  He  said  that, 
having  excellent  opportunities  of  cultivating  the 
acquaintance  of  the  clergy,  he  had  never  heard 
from  more  than  one  of  them,  in  public  or  in  pri- 
vate, any  thing  for  which  he  could  have  a  right  to 
pronounce  the  speaker  a  Unitarian  ;  and  that,  ex- 
cept u  at  most  four  or  five  heads  of  families,  there 
was  scarcely  a  parishioner  in  Boston,  who  would 
not  be  shocked  at  having  his  minister  preach  the 
peculiarities  of  Unitarianism."  He  did  not  assert 
that  they  worshipped  the  Trinity,  but  described 
them  as  "  holding  high  and  exalted  views  of  the 
person  and  mediation  of  Jesus  Christ,  resting  on 
the  merits  of  his  atonement,  his  cross  and  passion, 
and  zealous  to  pay  the  honor  which  they  believed 
due  to  his  name."     "  We  are  not,"   he   concluded, 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  67 

"  and  permit  me  to  add,  as  long  as  we  study  the 
Scriptures,  I  believe  we  shrill  not  become  converts 
to  your  new  doctrine."  Parkman  returned  home, 
and  on  the  death  of  Eliot,  in  1813,  became  his  suc- 
or.  For  a  single  year,  Abbot  occupied  the 
place  of  Emerson,  and  then  fell  in  the  flower  of  his 
(1  iys.  The  desk  of  Backminster  was  held  by  one 
who  began  as  early,  a  race  as  brilliant,  as  that  of 
his  predecessor  ;  but  more  various  and  longer.  It 
was  only  for  a  very  short  portion  of  that  race,  that 
Edward  Everett  put  off  the  academic  laurels,  and 
became  the  applauded  orator  of  Brattle-street. 
The  Convention  sermon  of  1812  had  been  preach- 
ed by  iMorse,  of  Charlestown,  in  a  tone  of  modera- 
tion;  and  in  that  of  1813,  President  Kirkland  ex- 
pressed "  the  whole  pith  and  marrow  of  liberal 
divinity ;"  and  in  the  judgment  of  his  friends, 
"  without  directly  impugning  any  of  the  tenets  of 
tho  opposite  theology,  examined  them  completely, 
and  brushed  them  away  like  cobwebs."  The  coun- 
cil summoned  by  the  ancient  church  of  Deerfield, 
was  about  to  proceed  to  the  ordination  of  Willard, 
the  chosen  candidate.  Its  members,  however,  pro- 
ceeded not  so  far  without  inquiry;  and  inquiry 
surprised  them  by  the  disclosure  of  his  Pelagian 
and  Arian  opinions.  The  council  paused  and 
withdrew,  refusing  their  assistance  ;  but  Willard 
was  ordained  by  another ;  a  discussion  in  pam- 
phlets ensued  ;  and  a  third  council,  summoned  by 
a  minority  of  the  church,  advised  them  to  with- 
draw, and  become  members  of  other  churches. 
About  the   same  time  a  council   at  Salisbury,  in 


68  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 


Xew-Hampshire,  condemned  the  Unitarianism  of 
Thomas  Worcester.  As  yet,  however,  not  a  single 
sermon  had  been  preached  in  Massachusetts 
against  the  Trinity,  except  at  King's  Chapel.  Not 
a  single  person,  except  Willard,  had  been  settled 
after  the  avowal  of  his  Unitarian  doctrine.  The 
General  Repository,  the  Christian  Monitor,  a  col- 
lection of  tracts,  which  had  been  becoming  more 
and  more  liberal,  and  the  Christian  Disciple,  which 
had  lately  arisen  with  a  tone  of  moderation,  were 
the  organs  of  a  party  that  still  moved  on  with  cau- 
tious reserve,  scarcely  conscious  of  its  own  num- 
bers. Already,  the  orthodox  ministers  of  the  State 
met  in  their  local  and  general  associations  ;  but 
when,  in  1814,  a  few  of  them  proposed  a  plan  of 
organization  which,  more  than  a  century  before, 
had  been  originally  suggested,  the  effect  was  proba- 
bly unfortunate.  It  was  interpreted  by  their  oppo- 
nents as  an  attack  on  private  freedom  of  con- 
science, and  perhaps  added  something  to  the  popu- 
lar prejudice  against  all  attempts  to  enforce,  or 
even  to  urge,  uniformity ;  and  by  a  general  con- 
sent it  was  in  the  end  relinquished.  But  these 
were  still  the  times  which  Greenwood  has  thus  de- 
scribed :  "  When,  in  our  religious  world,  there  was 
nothing  but  distrust  on  the  one  side,  and  fear  and 
evasion  on  the  other;  when  the  self-conceited  the- 
ologue  looked  awry  on  the  suspected  heretic,  and 
the  object  of  his  suspicion  answered  him  with  cir- 
cumlocution and  hesitation." 


. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND*  69 


CHAPTER   IX. 

With  the  year  1815  came  peace  with  Great 
Britain ;  and  with  the  peace,  came  both  the  book 
of  BeLsham  and  public  leisure  for  reflection.  Three 
days  before  the  commencement  of  the  year,  the 
granite  walls  of  the  new  church  in  Summer-street 
were  dedicated,  in  the  words  of  Thacher,  who 
preached  and  published  a  startling  sermon,  "  to 
God,  to  the  religion  of  his  Son,  who  died  for  us, 
to  the  spirit  of  evangelical  piety,  charity,  and  truth.*' 
Before  the  echoes  of  this  discourse  had  ceased,  a 
small  pamphlet  fell  from  the  press,  with  the  title, 
"  American  Unitarianism."  It  was  but  a  part  of 
the  Memoir  of  Lindsey,  containing  the  letters  of 
Wells  and  Freeman,  without  comment ;  except  that 
extracts  from  the  writings  of  Belsham  were  pre- 
fixed, illustrating  his  theology.  The  book  had 
been  obtained  by  Morse,  who  thus  turned  upon 
the  Unitarian  bands  in  America  the  artillery  of 
their  own  allies.  Vigorously  was  the  assault 
pushed  by  the  l^anoplist,  which,  in  a  succession  of 
able  articles,  charged  on  the  liberal  clergy  that  long 
suppression  of  their  opinions,  to  which  these  letters 
gave  certainly  every  aspect  of  design.  But  if  there 
had  been  concealment,  it  was  now  at  an  end  ;  and 
that  can  never  be  a  bright  page  in  the  history  of 
their  cause  in  New  England,  which  records  that  it 
was  not  their  own  hand  that  at  last  drew  the  veil 
6* 


70  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

aside.  Charming  answered  the  Panoplist  through 
a  leiter  to  Thacher,  repelling  with  indignation  the 
charge  of  unworthy  concealment,  avowing  that  his 
own  worship  and  sentiments  had  been  Unitarian, 
and  declaring  that  he  never  supposed  that  his 
friends  wished  to  be  thought  Trinitarians.  While 
he  contended  that  a  majority  of  the  liberal  clergy 
u  believed  that  Jesus  Christ  is  more  than  man,"  he 
yet  affirmed  it  to  be  "  no  crime  to  believe  with  Mr. 
Belsham."  Samuel  Worcester,  of  Salem,  met  the 
reply  of  Channing,  and  said  that  a  it  seemed  to 
have  been  received  as  an  established,  uncontested 
fact,  that  ministers  of  the  liberal  class  were  not  ac- 
customed to  be  unreserved  and  explicit  in  the  pub- 
lic avowal  and  declaration  of  their  sentiments." 
There  were  three  publications  on  each  side,  and  a 
layman,  the  most  active  member  of  the  corporation 
of  Harvard  College,  threw  in  a  pamphlet  of  per- 
sonal invective,  entitled,  "  Are  you  a  Christian,  or 
a  Calvinist  ?  "  The  controversy  degenerated  in  its 
progress ;  but  whether  it  were  that  — 

"Thrice  is  he  armed  who  hath  his  quarrel  just," — 

Worcester  proved  himself  no  unequal  antagonist, 
even  to  the  great  abilities  of  Channing. 

It  was  a  result  of  this  discussion  that  the  com- 
plete separation,  which  was  plainly  inevitable, 
came  on  without  delay.  The  Unitarians  avowed 
their  doctrine  from  the  pulpit ;  the  Trinitarians 
drew  together  into  a  more  compact  phalanx. 
Every  pastor  was  compelled  to  choose  his  place  on 
one  side  or  the  other  of  the  chasm.     Whatever  dis- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  71 

ruption  of  personal  unanimity,  or  of  parochial 
peace,  might  be  the  cost  of  an  open  decision,  the 
time  had  come  ;  except  when,  here  and  there,  some 
older  divine,  timid,  or  clinging  to  the  ancient  cus- 
toms, preserved  some  forms  of  fellowship  with  the 
teachers  of  an  opposite  doctrine,  there  was  an  end 
of  mutual  exchanges  and  councils.  Some  lingered 
awhile  upon  the  border,  but  the  gulf  was  everyday 
widening ;  and  while  they  yet  looked  across,  the 
most  moderate  felt  themselves  borne  backward. 

There  were,  at  that  time,  two  hundred  and 
ninety-three  townships  in  Massachusetts  ;  and  the 
Congregational  parishes  were  somewhat  more 
numerous.  The  churches  that  now  avowed  Uni- 
tarianism,  or  retained  Unitarian  pastors,  often  with 
loud  protests  against  the  name,  lay  almost  all  in 
the  eastern  part  of  the  commonwealth.  In  Boston, 
only  the  Old  South  and  the  Park-street  churches, 
adhered  to  the  orthodox  standard ;  and  from  the 
latter,  Griffin  had  just  retired.  The  aged  Lathrop, 
who  died  within  a  year  after  the  explosion  ;  Free- 
man, whose  colleague,  Cary,  died  also  in  1815, 
abroad  ;  Frothingham,  just  ordained  over  the  First 
Church  ;  the  Brattle-street  church,  which  the  retire- 
ment of  Everett  to  a  Cambridge  professorship  had 
left  without  a  pastor  ;  Parkman,  so  lately  the  repu- 
diator  of  the  Unitarian  name,  and  the  Socinian 
doctrine,  at  least ;  Thacher,  already  in  the  van  ; 
Holley,  brilliant,  eloquent,  once  deemed  an  able 
champion  of  truth  and  piety,  now  the  mere  victim 
of  a  worldly  and  unprincipled  vanity  ;  Lowell,  who 
rejected  least,  and  who  would  never  permit  him- 


72  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

self  to  assume  any  other  title  than  that  of  Christian, 
nor  to  be  numbered  with  the  party  with  whom  he 
acted ;  and  Channing,  whose  ardent  sensibilities,  a 
shining  intellect,  and  a  fluent  pen,  drew  to  the  head 
of  all;  —  these,  in  one  body,  transferred,  with  a 
single  exception,  the  ancient  churches  of  Boston  to 
a  system  of  religion,  which  would  once  have  shut 
out  every  one  of  its  professors  from  the  communion 
of  those  very  churches. 

In  the  populous  county  of  Middlesex,  few  of  the 
older  and  more  conspicuous  congregations  bowed 
at  once  to  this  mighty  revolution  of  opinions. 
Three  churches  in  Salem  gave  themselves  up,  after 
long  preparation,  to  the  liberal  theology  of  their 
pastors.  The  separation  in  Salem  was  broad  and 
deep,  and  Unitarianism  had  there  a  superiority 
which  it  could  not  sustain  through  the  county  of 
Essex.  In  Norfolk,  several  divines  of  influence 
brought  much  weight  to  the  new  theology ;  in 
Bristol,  a  smaller  number  were  its  advocates.  The 
oldest  church  in  New  England,  the  very  church  of 
the  pilgrims,  had  become  decidedly  Unitarian,  un- 
der the  ministry  of  Kendall.  Of  the  Barnstable 
ministers,  not  less  than  six  had  been,  in  the  first 
years  of  their  ministry,  of  the  liberal  school,  and 
had  afterwards,  as  they  professed,  been  brought  to 
a  nearer  and  more  spiritual  acquaintance  with  the 
gospel,  and  to  a  firm  confession  of  the  Trinity. 
The  only  Unitarian  minister  in  the  county,  seems 
to  have  been  Goodwin,  of  Sandwich;  and  there 
was  not  a  single  minister  of  that  belief  in  the  coun- 
ties of  Hampden  and  Berkshire.    In  number,  there- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  73 

fore,  the  orthodox  ministers  and  churches  far  ex- 
ceeded their  adversaries.  The  Unitarian  ministers 
of  Massachusetts,  in  1815,  can  hardly  have  been 
more  than  seventy-live  ;  the  orthodox  must  have 
been  more  than  two  hundred.  But  the  strength  of 
the  orthodox  was  less  in  their  numbers  than  in  the 
language  of  the  Scriptures,  in  the  testimony  of  the 
Christian  church  of  all  ages,  in  the  consent  of  the 
fathers  of  New  England,  in  their  own  missionary 
zeal,  in  the  evident  and  transforming  might  of  the 
gospel  as  it  was  preached  by  themselves,  and  in 
their  appeal  to  the  deepest  hopes  and  fears  of  sin- 
ful humanity;  an  appeal  to  which  the  souls  of 
men  had  always  answered.  Their  weakness  lay 
in  those  peculiar  doctrines  of  Calvinism  which, 
whether  truths  or  errors,  have  never  commanded 
the  general  assent  of  Christians,  and  have  often 
created  an  intense  prejudice ;  in  the  still  more  un- 
fortunate burden  of  an  inclination,  too  widely 
spread,  for  metaphysical  subtleties,  poor  aliment  of 
the  heart,  and  in  too  great  a  contempt  for  the  mild- 
er graces  of  style,  of  manner,  and  of  character. 

The  strength  of  the  Unitarian  party  was  still 
vast,  and  not  at  all  confined  to  the  parishes  where 
Unitarians  ministered.  They  offered  to  man  a  re- 
ligion which  demanded  from  the  understanding 
but  a  slight  submission,  and  imposed  no  grievous 
task  upon  the  army  of  the  undecided.  They 
taught  and  practised,  amongst  much  that  was  love- 
ly and  of  good  report,  a  gentleness  and  an  indul- 
gence, not  inconsistent  with  moral  strictness  of 
habit,  yet  exceedingly  pleasing  to  the  world.    They 


74  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

placed  in  their  front  a  company  of  men,  whose 
powers  of  mind  were  often  distinguished,  and 
whose  cultivated  taste  either  chastened  a  native 
eloquence,  or  else  gave  a  graceful  respectability  to 
tameness  of  intellect  and  effeminate  reasoning. 
They  had  the  university,  the  school  which  was 
cherishing  the  future  scholars  and  professional  men 
of  the  commonwealth.  They  had  an  immense 
preponderance  of  the  opulence  and  influence  of 
the  capital.  They  had  the  patronage  of  many  of 
the  ablest  men  in  Massachusetts,  whose  judgment, 
had  they  been  theologians,  or  persons  of  profound 
religious  earnestness,  might  have  wanted  the  au- 
thority which  it  possessed,  of  Parsons,  Story,  Par- 
ker, Dexter,  Lowell,  and  Bowditcb,  and  names  not 
less  distinguished,  but  not  yet  inscribed  on  sepul- 
chral monuments.  Their  weakness  was,  that  their 
system,  with  all  its  simplicity,  had  plainly  origi- 
nated from  some  other  source,  not  from  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Scriptures,  and  did  not  meet  the  ob- 
vious meaning  of  the  Scriptures  ;  that  it  seldom 
attracted  the  more  serious  minds  ;  that  it  bore  little 
fruit ;  that  it  accustomed  men  to  choose  their  reli- 
gious belief  by  their  feelings,  and  then  to  support  it 
by  irreverent,  if  not  insincere  interpretations  ;  that, 
being  in  truth  but  the  offspring  of  a  spirit  of  doubt, 
it  had  within  itself  the  germ  of  an  unbelief,  whose 
expansion  could  be  checked  by  no  determination 
of  the  present  hour,  or  the  present  age. 

The  Unitarians,  however,  satisfied  themselves, 
and  assured  mankind,  that  so  resplendent  a  light 
had  never  before  adorned  and  illustrated  Christian- 


HISTORY    OF     NEW    ENGLAND.  75 

ity.  Perhaps  it  was  a  policy,  that  unconsciously- 
mingled  itself  with  their  admiration  and  affection 
for  their  leaders.  Perhaps  it  was  because  the  chief 
seals  of  Unitarianism  were  a  rich  and  refined  city, 
somewhat  proud  of  its  refinement,  and  a  neighbor- 
ing university,  the  most  ancient  and  the  best  en- 
dowed in  the  land.  Perhaps  it  was  in  that  charm 
which  commonly  plays  around  a  novel  and  bold 
doctrine,  and  which  has  always  magnified  the  abil- 
ities of  those  by  whom  established  truth  is  dis- 
carded. Perhaps  the  scheme  of  a  different,  a  more 
liberal,  and  a  more  cheerful  religion  did,  indeed, 
for  a  time,  enlist  on  its  side  an  unusual  glow  of 
intellect.  There  was  Channing,  Holley,  Everett  — 
they  lamented  in  Buckminster  a  mental  and  spir- 
itual prodigy  ;  every  humbler  name  had  its  own 
honors.  To  accede  to  the  cause  of  such  wisdom, 
rescued  the  meanest  powers  from  the  reproach  of 
blindness,  of  bigotry,  and  of  lingering  behind  the 
great  progress  of  "  the  race."  It  seemed  their  opin- 
ion that,  so  soon  as  light  should  but  approach,  and 
fear  depart,  the  theologians  of  all  Christendom 
would  glide  into  the  delightful  current  as  easily  as 
the  theologians  of  eastern  Massachusetts.  A  higher 
philosophy,  and  a  nobler  moral  sentiment,  had  now 
but  to  disclose  themselves  peacefully  under  the 
pure  beams  of  a  religion  which  would  impose  no 
intellectual  restraint,  and  offend  no  intellectual  pre- 
judice. 

In  the  midst  of  this  opening  scene,  the  Conven- 
tion sermon  of  1816,  was  preached  by  Channing. 
His  theme  was  international  peace,  for  which  he 


76       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

asked  the  support  of  the  clergy,  while  they  yet 
freshly  felt  the  recent  calamities  of  European  and 
American  war.  He  turned  aside  from  the  field  of 
theological  controversy,  and  seemed  thus  to  plead 
for  union  on  the  high  table-land  of  moral  reforma- 
tion. But  to  reap  the  anticipated  harvests,  there 
was  need  of  many  a  sickle.  The  university  pre- 
pared to  augment  the  means  of  theological  educa- 
tion. A  society  was  formed,  which  became  the 
foundation  of  the  Faculty  of  Divinity.  The 
younger  Ware,  whose  writings  were  marked  be- 
yond those  of  his  brethren,  by  a  spirit  of  devotion, 
and  of  practical  earnestness,  now  succeeded  La- 
throp  at  the  Second  church,  while  Griffin  was  fol- 
lowed at  Park-street  by  a  son  of  President  Dwight 
A  second  Universalist  chapel  arose,  where  the 
Trinity  was  also  denied.  The  Recorder,  a  weekly 
newspaper  of  orthodox  principles,  was  established 
at  Boston.  In  the  convention  sermon  of  ISJ.7^ 
Hyde  of  Lee,  descending  from  the  western  hills,  to 
which  Unitarianism  had  not  penetrated,  plainly 
pronounced  those  to  be  heretics,  who  denied  the 
essential  divinity  of  the  Son  of  God  and  ranked 
him  among  created  beings,  super-angelical  or  hu- 
man. Thacher,  fleeing  from  clime  to  clime  for 
health,  died  among  strangers.  His  successor  was 
Greenwood,  a  beautiful  writer,  and  Palfrey  occu- 
pied the  pulpit  of  Brattle-street. 

For  a  time,  however,  the  two  parties  stood  oppo- 
site to  each  other,  almost  in  silence,  each  somewhat 
uncertain  of  the  ground  beneath  its  feet,  and  not 
anxious  to  aggravate  the  schism,  whose  gentlest 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  77 

progress  and  issue  could  not  but  bring  a  wide  and 
fearfu]  distress.  Only  once,  for  several  years,  was 
that  scene  witnessed  which   afterwards  was  to  be 

the  familiar  story  of  so  many  a  village  ;  a  church 
aud  its  parish  torn  asunder  ;  a  pastor  placed  over 
the  fold  from  whom  those  sheep,  who  had  promised 
to  hear  the  voice  of  the  chief  Shepherd,  fled,  as 
from  a  hireling  or  a  robber. 

But  in  1818,  the  fruitful  question  between 
churches  and  parishes  arose  once  more,  and  slept 
not  until  the  law  of  the  land  had  pronounced  a  de- 
cision, which  had  the  effects  of  an  earthquake,  ex- 
cept that  they  followed  not  at  once  from  the  gen- 
eral shock.  It  was  the  decision  of  the  highest 
courts  of  law,  that  the  majority  of  the  parish,  hav- 
ing elected  their  own  religious  teacher,  conferred 
upon  that  portion  of  the  communicants  who  re- 
mained with  them,  the  only  legal  character  in 
which  a  church  could  be  recognized.  The  pro- 
perty of  the  church,  even  to  the  sacred  vessels,  and 
the  records,  was  then  at  the  disposal  of  the  parish, 
so  long  as  even  two  or  three  communicants  were 
left  behind  ;  and  even  though  all  should  fail,  the 
right  only  remained  in  suspense  till  a  new  church 
should  be  organized. 

Sorrowful  and  indignant,  and  oppressed  with  a 
sense  of  wrong,  the  orthodox  body  submitted  to  a 
determination,  which,  however  just  and  unavoida- 
ble, yet  sanctioned  a  boundless  perversion  of  be- 
quests from  the  sacred  design  of  the  givers.  If 
they  could  not  condemn  the  judges  or  the  law,  as 
indeed  both  were  condemned  by  many,  they  were 
7 


78       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 


yet  compelled  to  detest  and  scorn  the  more  a  sys- 
tem of  doctrine,  or  of  denial,  which  could  employ 
the  votes  of  a  mingled  company,  of  whom  scarcely 
any  were  earnest  enough  in  religion  to  approach 
its  distinguishing  ordinances,  and  with  these  could 
wrench  away  all  but  freedom  of  conscience  from 
those  who  only  professed  the  belief  of  Christendom 
and  of  their  fathers.  But  the  issues  of  this  decis- 
ion remained  to  be  felt,  when  the  principle  of 
doubt  should  have  accomplished  its  riper  devel- 
opement. 


; 


CHAPTER   X. 


Harvard  University,  "  from  turret  to  founda- 
tion-stone," was  illuminated  by  the  calm  blaze  of 
that  rational  religion,  in  whose  light  all  distinctions 
of  Christian  doctrine  faded  away,  like  phosphores- 
cent objects  in  the  sunshine.  At  its  head  was 
Kirkland,  affably  benign,  "  stripping  religion  of  its 
stiff  and  formal  costume,  its  gloomy  and  forbidding 
looks,  and  its  austere  and  repellant  manners,"  the 
intimate  friend  of  the  Eliots,  Gores,  Smiths, 
McLeans,  Perkinses,  Thorndikes,  Lymans,  Park- 
mans,  Boylstons,  who  poured  out  the  treasures  by 
which  he  gathered  around  him  a  cluster  of  shining 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  79 

scholars  in  the  inferior  offices  of  the  University. 
McKean,  the  professor  of  Rhetoric,  who  died  in 
1818,  left  no  other  among  the  instructors  who  could 
be  charged  with  orthodoxy,  and  it  was  said  that 
his  place,  although  he  could  comply  so  far  as  to 
preach  the  sermon  at  the  ordination  of  Frothing- 
ham,  had  not  always  been  exempt  from  annoy- 
ance. The  fellows  and  the  elective  overseers,  were 
chiefly  of  the  liberal  churches  of  Boston  and  its 
neighborhood.  Crowned  with  its  ancient  renown, 
enriched  with  princely  magnificence,  and  adorned 
by  elegant  scholarship,  the  college  gave  lustre  to 
the  opinions  which  it  now  welcomed  to  its  bosom, 
and  over  whose  propagation  it  spread  its  maternal 
care.  But  scarcely  a  seventh  of  the  pupils  dedi- 
cated themselves  to  divinity,  and  scarcely  a  tenth 
to  the  divinity  that  reigned  at  Cambridge.  In  such 
a  progress,  centuries  might  be  consumed  before 
even  the  whole  commonwealth  should  be  enlight- 
ened. The  Divinity  School  arose,  to  attract,  as 
well  as  to  interest;  and  if  its  first  fruits  were  not 
numerous,  yet  the  flower  of  some  of  the  classes  of 
Harvard,  went  forth  to  oppose  in  the  pulpits  of 
Massachusetts  their  free  investigation,  their  philo- 
sophy of  religion,  their  rhetorical  grace,  their  sooth- 
ing or  animated  elocution,  and  the  flowers  which 
they  had  culled  from  the  fields  of  nature  or  of  the 
Scriptures,  to  the  honest  interpretations,  the  down- 
right argument,  the  urgent  zeal,  and  the  rigid 
sternness,  now  indeed  learning  to  be  less  rigid,  and 
less  stern,  of  ancient  orthodoxy.  A  brilliant  pro- 
mise attended  them  as  they  went,  but  even  mightier 


80  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

aid  was  given  to  the  triumph  of  the  principle  in 
which  Unitarianism  had  its  origin,  by  the  army  of 
educated  men  who  passed  from  Cambridge  to  the 
highest  seats  of  life  ;  almost  sure,  whether  they  be- 
lieved or  not  with  their  academic  teachers,  at  least 
with  thern  to  disbelieve. 

Opposite  to  the  front  of  this  mass  of  power, 
Holmes,  who  was  the  Convention  preacher  of 
1819,  maintained,  with  a  modest  steadfastness,  the 
creed  to  which  the  pastoral  pulpit  of  Cambridge 
had  not  yet  proved  itself  untrue.  But  Ware,  at 
the  ordination  of  Lamson,  had  taught,  with  all  the 
authority  of  his  chair,  that  while  "we  are  to  con- 
sider the  doctrines  delivered  by  the  apostles  and 
primitive  teachers,  as  given  them  by  revelation,  — 
the  arguments,  illustrations,  and  topics  of  persua- 
sion which  they  employed  to  enforce  them,  were 
the  suggestions  of  their  own  minds,  in  the  exercise 
of  their  respective  talents,  and  the  kinds  and  degree 
of  knowledge  they  possessed."  To  bear  the  same 
standard,  or  a  bolder,  to  the  western  valley  of  the 
land,  Holley,  the  most  eminent  pulpit  orator  of  his 
day,  now  departed  and  left  his  place  in  Hollis- 
street,  to  the  independence  and  poetic  fervor  of 
Pierpont.  Southward,  a  society  was  formed  at 
Baltimore,  and  placed  itself  under  the  charge  of 
Jared  Sparks,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the 
recent  pupils  of  Cambridge.  The  sermon  preached 
at  his  ordination,  by  Channing,  seemed  to  their  as- 
sociates in  belief  to  make  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  Christianity.  They  affirmed,  that  except  the 
preaching  of  Whitefield,  it  had  produced  "  a  more 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  81 

extensive  and  powerful  effect  on  the  religious  pub- 
lic than  had  ever  been  known  in  America."  The 
absence  of  doctrine  had  been  a  striking  feature  in 
many  of  the  earlier  of  the  liberal  preachers.  A 
placid  gentleness  of  style  wafted  the  mind  of  the 
hearer  along,  without  uneasiness  or  effort.  Stu- 
diously was  every  theme  avoided  which  could 
heavily  task  the  intellect,  or  very  deeply  agitate  the 
heart.  A  shrewd  divine  of  that  day  not  inaptly 
compared  the  mental  state  in  which  it  reigned, 
with  that  state  of  the  corporeal  system  in  which 
the  power  of  digesting  strong  and  nutricious  food 
has  been  lost.  The  ambitious  eloquence  of  Everett 
or  Holley  might  captivate  the  ear  with  any  senti- 
ment. Men  of  profounder  feelings  loved  better  the 
too  chastised  earnestness  of  Buckminster.  The 
mass  remained  like  polished  marble  beneath  the 
gentle  droppings  of  common  Unitarianism.  Chan- 
ning  had  once  perceived  the  appalling  defect,  and 
longed  for  a  more  ancient  fervor.  But  once  yield- 
ing to  the  tide  of  doubt,  he  not  only  dismissed  the 
doctrines  of  the  Trinity,  of  human  corruption,  and 
of  the  atonement,  but  seemed  at  length  to  be  much 
warned  by  a  stern  prejudice  which  beheld  in  them 
the  chief  obstacles  to  the  march  of  religious  im- 
provement All  the  energy  of  his  active  and  glow- 
ing intellect  was  thenceforth  to  be  turned  either  to 
their  overthrow,  or  to  the  propagation  of  such  virtue 
and  such  piety,  as  could  dispense  with  their  sup- 
port. Advancing  in  this  path,  he  had  seen  him- 
self compelled  to  assume  the  post  of  a  foremost 
champion.     With  an  eye  for  moral  beauty  every- 


32  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASLICAL 

where,  except  where  he  was  enslaved  by  one 
mighty  antipathy;  an  engaging  writer,  but  always 
leaving  the  objections  of  his  antagonist  unsatisfied  ; 
skilful  in  offering  that  side  of  his  theme  which  won 
his  own  regard,  while  he  threw  a  shadow  over  that 
which  had  been  repulsive  ;  egotistical,  confident  in 
his  own  powers,  ignorant  of  mankind,  and  trusting 
to  the  most  uncertain  dreams  of  the  future  desti- 
nies of  man  on  earth,  and  to  the  most  vague  con- 
ceptions of  abstract  goodness  ;  he  surrendered  for 
these  the  impregnable  rock  of  revelation.  At 
length,  his  aversion  became  a  fixed,  daring,  impla- 
cable hatred  ;  nothing  was  too  bold  for  his  pen,  or 
too  relentless  for  his  spirit,  till,  before  the  end  of 
his  course,  the  Christian  minister  seemed  lost  in 
the  benevolent  philosopher,  in  the  teacher  of  high 
morals,  in  the  man  who  reserved  to  himself  the 
right  of  changing  perpetually  his  decision  on  the 
very  meaning  of  that  religion  to  whose  service  he 
had  been  consecrated.  When  now  he  arose  at 
Baltimore  to  declare  the  principles  which  were  to 
be  launched  forth  into  a  hostile  community,  he 
strengthened  himself  indeed  with  some  aspect  of 
scriptural  argument.  But  he  threw  all  hereditary 
reverence  aside,  and  openly  and  ardently  disclaim- 
ed, repelled,  and  almost  ridiculed,  what  had  ever 
been  dearest  to  the  heart  of  Christendom.  On  his 
journey,  too,  he  preached  at  New  York  almost  the 
first  Unitarian  sermon  which  had  been  heard  in 
that  great  mart,  and  planted  the  seeds  of  a  congre- 
gation. 

Stuart,   of  Andover,  a    name    already    honored 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND. 


83 


with  some  wreaths  from  the  walks  of  sacred  litera- 
ture, published  letters  to  Charming,  in  reply  to  his 
sermon  at  Baltimore.  Disclaiming  somewhat 
ostentatiously  all  subjection  to  human  authority, 
morbidly  jealous  of  the  rights  of  individual  opin- 
ion, he  rejected  much  of  the  language  of  the 
ancient  church,  and  was  not  quite  content  with 
the  creed  of  Nice.  But  solemnly,  eloquently, 
earnestly,  and  with  deep  fervency  of  soul,  he 
maintained  the  threefold  distinction  in  the  God- 
head,  the  unequivocal  deity  of  the  Redeemer  and 
the  Comforter.  Fresh  from  the  writings  of  Ger- 
man neologists,  he  declared  aloud  that  here,  as 
there,  the  simple  question  between  the  parties 
must  soon  be,  "whether  natural  or  revealed  re- 
ligion is  our  guide  and  hope."  The  letters  of 
Woods  of  Andover  to  Unitarians,  of  Ware  to 
Trinitarians  and  Calvinists,  and  of  Woods  in  re- 
ply, were  the  next  chapter  in  the  controversy. 
They  appeared  in  1820  and  1821,  and  embraced 
the  whole  field,  but  touched  slightly  the  question 
of  the  divine  nature,  and  more  extensively  the  doc- 
trines of  depravity  and  redemption.  The  argu- 
ment of  Woods  was  cogent  and  skilful ;  the  whole 
Unitarian  system  had  a  faithful  representative,  and 
was  displayed  in  its  most  popular  form  ;  and  the 
discussion  was  distinguished  by  its  mildness  and 
courtesy.  Yet  Woods  forbore  not  to  pronounce 
the  system  of  Unitarianism  to  be  another  gospel. 

The  growth  of  Unitarianism,  in  the  Middle 
States,  was  now  repelled  by  a  shield  that  had  been 
often  tried  in  polemic  warfare.      In   the  works  of 


84  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

Miller,  the  chief  blemish  is,  that  in  his  desire  to 
perfect  the  triumph  of  his  cause,  he  frames  asser- 
tions that  require,  but  do  not  receive,  some  qualify- 
ing limits.  He  is  a  general  who  sweeps  across  the 
field  and  claims  an  exterminating  victory,  while  he 
fails  to  notice  that  at  different  points  the  hostile 
bands  are  rallying  in  the  rear  of  his  too  confident 
pursuit  But  his  "  Letters  on  Unitarianism,"  ad- 
dressed to  a  Presbyterian  Church  in  Baltimore, 
were  a  manly,  energetic  volume,  which  unspar- 
ingly overthrew  and  trampled  down  the  system, 
and  which  must  much  and  justly  have  moved  the 
men  of  common  intelligence  and  active  habits,  for 
whom  especially  it  was  written,  A  reply  was 
published  by  Sparks,  and  Stuart  also  thought  it 
needful  to  publish  in  1822  his  letters  to  Miller,  in 
his  own  defence  ;  for  the  Princeton  professor  had 
condemned  his  rash  rejection  of  the  ancient  lan- 
guage and  doctrine  concerning  the  eternal  genera- 
tion of  the  Son. 

So  completely  was  the  ancient  college  of  Mas- 
sachusetts wrested  from  the  hands  of  those  who 
inherited  the  principles  of  its  founders,  that  they 
felt  themselves  compelled  to  lay  new  foundations* 
Williams  College,  though  not  abroad,  was  on  a 
distant  frontier,  and  therefore,  under  a  kind  of  ne- 
cessity, the  institution  at  Amherst  arose.  It  was 
a  feature  of  the  schism  which  was  now  entire,  that 
it  entered  into  the  heart  of  almost  all  intelligent 
communities,  at  least  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
Connecticut,  and  did  not  merely  place  parish 
against  parish,  but  left  no  primitive  parish  without 


HISTORY    OF    M1W    ENGLAND. 


85 


an  admixture  of  opposite  elements.  Where  the 
pastor  and  a  majority  of  the  people  had  fespoused 

the  new  doctrine,  individuals  were  slill  found, 
whom  education,  family  ties,  or  conscientious  con- 
viction, bound  to  that  which  it  supplanted.  Where 
the  pastor  and  the  church  adhered  to  their  faith, 
the  unity  of  the  neighborhood  was  still  broken. 
Some  clergymen  at  no  great  distance,  was  known 
to  give  a  milder  and  broader  interpretation  of  his 
message.  The  liberal  publications  made  their  way 
to  many  households.  Here  and  there  one  of  those 
peculiar  minds  that  delight  in  being  wiser  and 
bolder  than  the  rest;  here  and  there  a  subtle 
thinker,  or  a  man  who  held  it  praise  enough  to 
believe  with  the  great  men  of  the  courts  and  cap- 
ital ;  here  and  there  a  representative,  who,  linger- 
ing through  his  winter  weeks  at  Boston,  had  drunk 
in  the  accents  of  Channing  or  of  Greenwood  ;  here 
and  there  a  recent  son  of  Harvard,  with  his  aca- 
demic sense  of  superiority  to  superstition;  here 
and  there  a  speaker,  skilled  to  declaim  against  the 
mental  slavery  of  creeds  and  confessions  ;  scattered 
throughout  the  country,  and  planted  in  almost 
every  parish,  were  these  nuclei  of  resistance  to  or- 
thodoxy. Around  them  gathered  such  as  could  not 
endure  the  severity  of  a  doctrine  by  which  they 
were  condemned  ;  such  as  believed  themselves  in 
no  need  of  serious  repentance  ;  such  as  only  turned 
aside  from  the  world  on  Sundays  to  keep  the  cus- 
toms of  their  fathers  ;  and  such  as,  doubting  the 
whole  religion,  would  naturally  prefer  to  listen  to  a 
system  which  had  the  least  to  be  doubted.     Thus 


86  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

it  was  that  in  the  councils  of  the  State  the  liberal 
doctrine  had  far  more  than  its  proportion  of  repre- 
sentatives, and  for  four  years  the  college  of  Amherst 
acted  without  incorporation.  The  Convention  ser- 
mon of  1822  was  preached,  however,  by  Moore,  its 
first  president,  and  contained  an  acknowledgment 
of  the  Trinity.  But  more  disastrous  by  far  was 
the  disunion  of  parishes,  when  an  aged  pastor  slept 
with  his  predecessors,  or  when  some  imprudence 
had  given  offence,  or  finally,  when  the  doubters  felt 
their  own  strength  to  be  sufficient  for  a  revolution. 
Occasions  could  not  be  wanting  ;  and  while  the 
Unitarians  courted,  and  the  orthodox  refused,  the 
offices  of  brotherly  fellowship,  it  was  easy  to  estab- 
lish a  prepossession  in  favor  of  the  more  liberal 
side.  Few  were  the  believers  in  the  system  of  the 
Unitarian  theologians.  But  many  were  there  whose 
belief  in  any  system  was  but  the  most  indistinct 
and  general.  Few  loved,  or  cared  to  hear  the 
Unitarian  arguments  from  the  pulpit,  but  many 
disliked  yet  more  the  orthodox  anathema.  When 
the  hour  of  choice  came  on,  and  previous  strife  had 
added  a  hundred  incidental  irritations,  it  is  not 
strange  that  neighbors  and  brethren  so  often  broke 
away,  and  that  the  village  street  that  divided  two 
houses  of  Congregational  worship  became,  for  all 
the  ends  of  religious  separation,  a  gulf  as  wide  and 
as  deep  as  the  ocean. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  87 


CHAPTER    XI. 

A  sermon  preached  at  Worcester,  by  Beecher, 
whose  robust,  unpolished  strength  now  towered 
upward  among  the  orthodox  clergy  of  New  Eng- 
land, carried  on  the  thread  of  discussion  till  the 
establishment,  in  1824,  of  the  "  Christian  Exam- 
iner," on  the  grave  of  the  less  fitly  designated 
"  Christian  Disciple.''  The  Examiner  became  the 
chief  and  the  able  organ  of  those  doctrines  for 
whose  promulgation  it  was  destined  and  designed 
to  labor  with  the  spirit  that  beseemed  its  title.  It 
leaned  upon  the  Baltimore  sermon  of  Channing, 
and  reproached  the  orthodox  for  the  separaiion 
which  eight  years  had  now  decided.  But  its  first 
volume  contained  a  report  of  the  "  Massachusetts 
Evangelical  Society,"  a  Unitarian  body  ;  a  report 
which  was  plainly  intended  to  be  a  landmark, 
which  might  either  bound  encroachment,  or  de- 
monstrate the  falsehood  of  the  charge  of  encroach- 
ment. It  thus  protected  against  the  progress  of 
that  mode  of  thinking  which  delights  to  represent 
"  a  God  all  mercy." 

"  The  prevalence,"  it  said,  "  of  the  modern  sect 
of  Universalists,  who  deny  the  doctrine  of  a  future 
retribution,  and  who  do  not  consider  a  pious  and 
holy  life  essenlial  to  happiness  hereafter,  is  partic- 
larly  alarming,  and  calls  for  the  special  notice   of 


OO       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

all  serious  Christians.  We  think  this  system  to  be 
most  injurious  to  the  interests  of  good  morals,  and 
to  the  welfare  of  civil  society,  as  well  as  fatally 
dangerous  to  the  souls  of  men,  and  we  believe  it 
directly  contrary  to  the  plainest  declarations  of  the 
holy  gospel."  The  clerical  trustees,  whose  signa- 
tures were  affixed  to  this  document,  were  Bancroft, 
Thayer,  Foster,  Lowell,  Pierce,  Kendall,  Parkman, 
Ripley  and  Ware.  It  had  the  fate  of  many  other . 
landmarks,  and  remains  to  denote  the  period  and 
the  men. 

In  1825,  the  American  Unitarian  Association 
was  formed  for  the  concentration  of  Unitarian 
efforts  and  the  propagation  of  Unitarian  sentiments 
through  books,  and  tracts,  and  missionaries.  There 
were,  indeed,  grave  questions  which  might  have 
been  expected  to  divide  those  efforts,  as  they  cer- 
tainly separated  those  sentiments.  There  was  a 
higher  and  a  lower  class  of  Unitarians,  and  still 
beyond  these  a  highest  and  a  lowest.  But  it  was 
calmly  announced  that,  concerning  these  lowest 
doctrines,  "  those  who  agreed  in  the  great  point  of 
the  simple  unity  of  God,  differed,  and  should  differ 
in  peace."  Only  the  phrase  "  the  eternal  Son  of 
God,"  was  unscriptural  and  absurd :  every  thing 
else  might  claim  an  undisturbed  tolerance.  In  its 
first  year,  the  Christian  Examiner  announced  to 
the  world  that  he  believed  enough  who  believed 
no  more  than  the  humanity  of  Jesus  Christ,  who 
denied  the  existence  of  the  devil,  and  who  deemed 
the  allusions  of  the  New  Testament  to  evil  spirits 
to  be  a  mere  indulgence  of  the  language  of  popu- 
lar superstition. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  89 

But  in  the  next  year,  a  new  editor  lifted  his 
anchor  and  boldly  swung  forth  into  a  sea  of  per- 
petual uncertainty.  He  declared  that  the  publica- 
tion, in  ita  several  shapes,  had  "  advocated  no 
doctrines  and  been  conducted  on  no  principles, 
which  forbade  making  a  change,  whenever  a 
change  should  appear  to  be  an  improvement."  Its 
religion  was  henceforth  to  be  known,  not  merely 
as  u  liberal,"  but  pre-eminently  as  "  rational."  The 
sacraments  were  carefully  stripped  of  all  sanctity 
beyond  that  which  belongs  to  common  worship. 
It  gave  to  the  Scriptures  "  their  own  station,  which 
was  a  high  one  among  the  oracles  of  sacred  in- 
struction." It  is  said  that  "  the  Comforter  that 
Jesus  promised,  and  God  sent  down,  is  Truth."  It 
calmly  stated  that  "  the  character  of  Jesus  has 
many  traits  of  surpassing  excellence  ;  "  it  also  felt 
no  particular  friendship  or  partiality  for  Socinian- 
ism,  and  even  thought  it  "  an  unscriptural  doctrine." 
More  loud  and  earnest  was  its  warning  against  all 
claims  of  ministerial  authority,  which  might  bar  the 
progress  of  free  inquiry. 

"  To  all  beside,  indifferent,  easy,  cold, 
Here  the  fire  kindled,  and  the  wo  was  told." 

At  this  period  the  Unitarian  congregations  in  the 
United  States,  apart  from  Massachusetts,  were  said 
by  a  writer  in  the  Examiner,  to  be  no  more  than 
one  flourishing  congregation  at  Portland,  and  two 
or  three  others,  small  and  unimportant,  in  Maine  ; 
one  large  society  at  Portsmouth,  and  here  and 
8 


90  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

there  a  small  one,  as  at  Keene,  and  Amherst,  in 
New  Hampshire  ;  one  at  Burlington,  in  Vermont ; 
one  in  Rhode  Island  ;  a  small  one  in  Connecticut ; 
one  in  New  York  ;  five  or  six  small  ones  in  Penn- 
sylvania; one  at  Baltimore,  only  able  by  borrow- 
ing money  to  save  its  church  from  the  hammer ; 
one  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  one  in  South 
Carolina.  The  same  writer  avowed  that  in  Massa- 
chusetts "  Unitarianism  was  not  heartily  and  intel- 
ligently embraced  by  one  half  of  the  Unitarian 
societies,  nor  by  one  third  of  the  members  of  the 
other  half;"  that  "the  ministers  must  seldom 
preach  to  them  liberal  doctrine,"  as  they  were 
"resolved  not  to  be  Trinitarians,"  but  were  not 
resolved  what  they  were,  nor  what  they  ought  to 
be  in  the  way  of  doctrine."  In  such  a  survey  he 
found  a  defence  against  the  charge  of  coldness  to 
missionary  labors. 

The  conversion  of  an  East  Indian  missionary  to 
Unitarianism,  and  of  the  celebrated  Ramohun 
Roy  to  something  that  could  be  mistaken  for  Uni- 
tarianism, had  lighted  up  a  glimmer  of  interest 
which  issued  in  a  correspondence. 

Divinity  Hall,  at  Cambridge,  was  erected  in 
1826,  and  dedicated,  as  it  was  expressed  in  the 
discourse  of  Channing,  "  to  free  inquiry,  to  the 
love  of  truth,  to  religious  feeling,  to  faith  in  the 
glorious  issues  of  Christianity,  to  the  improvement 
of  the  ministry,  to  Christian  independence,  and  to 
the  spirit  of  martyrdom."  It  was  time,  indeed,  that 
the  ancient  phraseology  on  such,  occasions  should 
give  place  to  a  more  abstract  language.     The  chief 


HISTORY    OF     NEW    ENGLAND.  91 

professor  in  that  seminary  had  expressly  assumed 
the  Unitarian  name,  and  disclaimed  the  atonement, 
except  through  tin;  regenerating  power  of  the 
gospel,  and  the  influence  of  the  instruction  and 
example  of  Jesus.  Chaining  himself,  in  a  dis- 
course which  he  pronounced  also  in  1826,  at  the 
dedication  of  a  second  place  of  worship  for  his 
brethren  in  New  York,  had  poured  out  his  whole 
power  of  invective  and  ridicule  against  doctrines 
which  were  the  dearest  treasures  of  almost  every 
worshipper  in  the  great  metropolis. 

In  1827,  the  Convention  sermon  on  ecclesias- 
tical peace,  was  preached  by  Abbot  of  Beverly,  a 
conciliating  divine  of  the  liberal  opinions.  Till 
now  the  two  parties  in  the  convention  had  tacitly 
permitted  to  each  other  the  alternate  selection  of 
the  preacher.  The  Trinitarians  now  determined 
to  assert  the  right  of  the  majority,  and  to  follow  the 
manly  and  obvious  rule  of  voting  for  none,  and  of 
voting  against  all,  except  such  as  would  preach  the 
doctrines  in  which  they  recognized  "  the  power  of 
God  unto  salvation." 

The  Christian  Examiner  of  1827,  was  content  to 
acknowledge  that  its  editors  "  thought  they  should 
prefer  to  the  speculations  of  the  infidel  theologians 
of  Germany,  even  Calvinism  itself,  in  a  mitigated 
state,  though  they  might  hesitate  about  some  of  the 
more  odious  and  mischievous  forms,  in  which  it 
had  lately  appeared."  It  acquiesced  in  the  reason- 
ing that  "  to  worship  Christ  as  God,  was  to  deny 
him,"  one  of  the  shameless  absurdities  of  Whitman 
of   Waltham  ;  and  in  the  statement  which  the  life 


92       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

of  Norton  was  given  to  sustain,  that  the  New 
Testament  was  not  a  revelation,  but  the  history  of 
a  revelation.  The  most  powerful  and  popular  ar- 
guments, however,  were  still  aimed  at  distorted 
pictures  of  Calvinism,  for  which  the  most  grim 
of  ancient  Calvinists  hardly  furnished  an  outline. 
If  the  resemblance  was  denied,  it  was  said  that 
orthodoxy  had  changed  its  features,  and  was  pre- 
paring to  attach  itself  to  the  triumph  of  rational 
religion.  But  not  the  less  was  the  picture  assailed 
with  triumphant  indignation. 

Channing  in  the  noonday  of  his  renown,  Pier- 
pont  with  his  air  of  undaunted  frankness,  and 
Dewey  with  that  eloquence  which  could  invest 
with  u  a  glory  and  a  glow  "  sentiments  the  most 
earthly  and  frivolous  ;  all  denounced  the  Calvin- 
istic  system  as  ascribing  to  the  Maker  of  mankind 
acts  which  would  dishonor  the  throne  of  a  human 
tyrant.  It  was  no  preference  for  abstract  Unita- 
rianism,  that  reconciled  men  to  the  surrender  of  all 
which  it  denied.  But  one  writer  thus  clothed  the 
opposite  doctrine  with  the  most  revolting  and  ter- 
rific aspect.  Another  spread  out  a  charming  land- 
scape ia  contrast,  embracing  all  which  is  lovely 
and  of  good  report,  without  one  stern  passage  of 
the  pilgrimage.  Another  hastened  to  allow  the 
claims  of  all  worldly  business,  and  the  innocence 
of  all  worldly  pleasures  within  the  limits  imposed 
by  a  moderate  temper,  and  a  wise  regard  to  per- 
sonal interest.  Another  had  not  a  severe  word  for 
any  opinion,  and  owned  that  he  might  himself  be 
in  error  on   any  topic,  however  momentous  might 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  93 

seem  the  necessity  of  truth.  It  would  have  been 
wonderful  if  the  undecided,  the  indifferent,  the 
inexperienced,  the  prosperous,  the  light-hearted,  all 
who  were  as  far  as  possible  from  being  weary  and 
heavy  laden,  had  not  been  swayed  like  the  trees 
in  the  wind.  To  such,  and  to  those  who  honestly 
abhorred  the  Calvinistic  creed,  and  knew  no  other, 
were  now  added  a  company  of  speculative  minds, 
that  went  forth,  like  the  raven  from  the  ark,  over 
the  ocean  of  free  inquiry,  and  too  often,  like  the 
raven,  returned  no  more. 


CHAPTER   XII. 


Unitarianism,  viewed  as  the  doctrine  of  a  Chris- 
tian sect,  had  now  uttered  its  voice.  Men  had  heard 
that  it  mattered  not  to  their  hope  or  love,  whether 
Jesus  were  but  the  son  of  Joseph,  or  one  higher 
than  archangels;  that  the  ancient  belief  in  the 
Trinity  was  absurd  and  polytheistic;  that  the  pop- 
ular conception  of  the  atonement  was  to  be  boldly 
compared  with  all  things  horrid,  detestable,  and 
degrading;  that  human  nature  needed  nothing  but 
encouragement  for  the  developement  within  itself 
of  all  which  is  noble  and  divine;  that  "  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  a  divine  assistance  accordant  with  the 
8* 


94  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

fundamental  truth  that  virtue  is  the  mind's  own 
work,"  and  that  the  word  "  hell,"  by  a  perverted 
and  exaggerated  use,  had  done  unspeakahle  injury 
to  Christianity. 

The  bonds  of  fellowship  with  the  body  of  Chris- 
tians of  the  present  age,  as  well  as  of  all  former 
days,  were  sundered.  There  was  no  respect  for 
modern  creeds  ;  no  reverence  for  the  belief  or  ex- 
ample of  antiquity.  The  terror  of  authority  was 
now  at  an  end.  All  were  free,  and  Calvinism 
could  no  longer  embitter  the  enjoyments  of  life, 
except  for  those  who  chose  to  put  on  its  fetters. 
Then  the  merits  of  the  substitute  began  to  claim 
attention.  When  the  negative  warfare  had  been 
pushed  as  far  as  could  consist  with  any  possible 
construction  of  the  Scriptures,  it  remained  to  be 
seen  whether  the  spirit  of  doubt  would  acknowl- 
edge such  a  limit,  and  on  the  other  side,  whether 
the  human  heart,  craving  "  the  substance  of  things 
hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  unseen,"  could  be 
also  satisfied. 

For  some  local  or  accidental  cause,  the  parish  of 
Charlton,  in  1827  or  1828,  fixed  their  eyes  upon 
Edward  Turner,  who  was  engaged  in  the  propa- 
gation of  Universalism  in  another  region  of  New 
England.  He  accepted  their  summons  to  become 
their  minister;  the  attending  council,  composed  of 
eight  Unitarian  ministers,  Bancroft,  Allen  of  North- 
borough,  Walker,  Huntoon,  Thompson,  May,  and 
Osgood  of  Sterling,  proposed  no  question  con- 
cerning his  faith  ;  and  as  the  Universalists  had 
generally  discarded  the    sacraments,   he   received 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  95 

baptism  from  the  hands  of  Bancroft  on  the  very 
day  of  his  installation.  Through  the  Universalist 
journals  he  announced  that  no  change  had  oc- 
curred in  his  opinions  ;  and  that  he  still  labored 
for  the  same  ends  in  the  same  spirit.  At  the  same 
time,  a  not  unmeaning  union  of  two  journals  of  the 
more  popular  class,  furnished  a  wider  token  of 
progress.  The  "Christian  Inquirer"  was  a  Uni- 
tarian paper,  published  by  Barnabas  Bates,  who 
had  been  a  Baptist  minister,  and  afterwards  achiev- 
some  notoriety  in  politics.  The  u  Olive  Branch  " 
was  a  Universalist  paper  of  Abner  Kneeland,  who 
was,  a  few  years  later,  a  convicted  blasphemer  and 
an  avowed  Atheist.  These  two  journals  became 
one  in  ]828;  and  the  first  number  after  their 
their  union  declared  that  "  the  great  mass  of  Uni- 
tarians, both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  boldly 
avowed  their  disbelief  of  eternal  misery,  and  their 
firm  persuasion  of  the  restoration  of  mankind  to 
holiness  and  happiness."  There  was  no  longer  a 
bulwark  between  the  Unitarians  of  Massachusetts 
and  that  portion,  at  least,  of  the  Universalist  body, 
who  denied  only  the  eternity  of  retribution  ;  and 
these  were  not  known  to  the  world  as  distinct  from 
that  great  mass  who  refused  all  thoughts  of  an  ac- 
count hereafter. 

But  this  vicinity  was  perilous  ;  and  there  were 
Unitarians  who  had  not  consented  that  Bates  or 
Turner  should  be  their  representative.  To  such 
the  more  adventurous  answered  that  the  common 
cause  was  not  pledged  by  the  language  or  the  in- 
quiries of  individuals.     A  meeting-house  had  been 


96  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

built  in  Boston  by  some  of  the  admirers  of  Hol- 
ley ;  and  he  was  on  his  return  from  the  south  west, 
when  a  tropical  fever  smote  him,  and  he  was  buried 
in  the  deep.  Motte,  a  graduate  of  Cambridge,  who 
had  received  Episcopal  orders,  but  afterwards  em- 
braced the  Unitarian  system,  became  their  pastor  ; 
and  the  sermon  at  his  ordination  was  preached  by 
Channing.  But  he  spoke  not  now  as  at  Balti- 
more. "  I  am  no  organ  of  a  sect,"  he  said,  "but 
speak  for  myself  alone;"  "what  other  men  be- 
lieve, is  to  me  of  little  moment;"  and,  "were  the 
name  of  Unitarian  more  honored,  I  should  be  glad 
to  throw  it  off."  In  another  ordination  sermon  of 
his,  preached  also  in  1828,  the  first  person  singular 
of  the  personal  pronoun  was  employed  about  a 
hundred  and  forty  times;  and  this  little  trait  of 
many  Unitarian  discourses  disclosed  the  character 
which  they  now  assumed  ;  the  character  of  indi- 
vidual speculations  on  man,  on  virtue,  on  religion, 
and  on  the  prospects  of  "  the  race."  Lowell,  whose 
attitude,  indeed,  had  always  been  the  same,  avowed 
that  he  "  neither  took  the  name,  nor  belonged  to 
the  party  of  those  who  designated  themselves  as 
Unitarians  ;  he  preached  of  the  Saviour  as  "  an 
inconceivably  exalted  Being,"  who  "  humbled  him- 
self, that  by  his  obedience  and  death  he  might 
make  propitiation  for  the  sins  of  mankind;"  and 
he  admitted,  it  was  said,  the  eternity  of  punish- 
ment. But  the  u  Unitarian  Advocate"  was  estab- 
lished by  Sewall,  in  the  Humanitarian  cause  ;  and 
the  Socinian  exposition  of  Kenrick  was  repub- 
lished.    Pierpont  regarded  the  resurrection  of  the 


BISTORT    OF    MBW    KNGLAND.  97 

body  as  a  a  doctrine  never  taught  by  Christ,  and 
not  at  all  demonstrated  by  his  own  resurrection; 
and  would  not  oppose  prayers  for  the  intercession 
of  saints,  nor  for  the  departed,  good  or  evil.  The 
correspondents  of  the  Christian  Examiner  inter- 
preted the  judgment  as  entirely  internal ;  the  last 
day  as  the  close  of  life;  and  the  resurrection  as 
"  the  instant  event,  by  which  man,  as  soon  as  he 
passes  from  the  body,  enters  the  undisguised  pres- 
ence of  God."  They  contended  against  the  abuses 
of  attributing  too  much  to  the  prayers  of  ministers, 
or  to  public  prayers  and  preaching  at  all ;  and 
against  all  superstitious  and  mystical  conceptions 
of  the  value  of  the  Lord's  supper.  "  As  often," 
said  they,  whether  intending  a  paraphrase  or  an 
improvement  of  the  words  of  St.  Paul,  "as  often 
as  we  eat  the  bread  and  drink  the  cup,  let  us  show 
forth,  with  all  affection  and  humility,  the  remem- 
brance of  Christ ;  and  let  us  ever  show  forth  the 
same  remembrance,  by  the  imitation  of  his  virtues." 
The  reasoning  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrewrs, 
which  was  denied  to  Paul,  "  could  not,"  it  was  said, 
in  the  same  pages,  "  be  regarded  as  of  any  force  by 
an  intelligent  reader  of  the  present  day  ;  "  even  the 
reasoning  of  Paul  would  "  not  always  bear  a  phi- 
losophical scrutiny  ;  "  the  evangelists  were  "  them- 
selves allegorists,"  and  had  but  "reported  the  words 
of  Christ  from  memory,  and  that  not  always  with 
perfect  accuracy." 

In  1827,  Oilman  had  ventured  to  say  of  the 
United  States,  that  "  for  every  single  individual  who 
abandoned  Unitariamsm,it  was  an  undeniable  fact 


98       PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

that  more  than  one  whole  congregation  acceded  to 
the  system ;  and  which,"  he  added,  "  I  see  and  feel, 
will  be  the  proportion  of  its  progress  to  that  of  its 
decline,  for  centuries  to  come."  Many  a  parish, 
indeed,  was  distracted  by  long  and  successful 
measures,  designed  to  wring  from  the  orthodox 
pastors  the  relinquishment  of  their  pulpits.  But 
scenes  like  these  could  only  purify  the  orthodox 
cause,  and  give  intensity,  clearness  and  directness 
to  its  resistance.  The  u  Spirit  of  the  Pilgrims M 
was  a  monthly  journal,  which  arose,  armed  for  the 
contest ;  and  so  vigorous  and  timely  were  its  blows, 
that  the  joints  in  the  armor  of  Unitarianism  were 
exposed,  and  every  vulnerable  part  lay  bare  and 
bleeding. 

The  Unitarians  were  not  unwilling  that  the  ardor 
of  the  last  few  years  should  abate  ;  Frothingham 
published  in  a  sermon  "  A  Plea  against  Religious 
Controversy ; "  Lowell,  in  another,  insisted  that 
"  The  Clergy,  and  not  Religion,  was  the  Source  of 
Division  and  Strife  in  the  Christian  Church  ; " 
even  Dewey  printed  a  discourse  on  sectarianism  ; 
and  a  writer  with  the  title  of  "  Old  Experience" 
prefixed  to  a  pamphlet,  on  "  The  Final  Tendency 
of  the  Religious  Disputes  of  the  Present  Day,"  the 
quaint  motto,  "  There  came  a  Viper  out  of  the 
Heat."  An  unsuccessful  attempt  was  made  by 
Palfrey  to  introduce  an  English  Bible  corrected  by 
the  text  of  Griesbach ;  which  would  have  ex- 
cluded from  the  popular  ear  the  disputed  passage 
in  the  first  epistle  of  St.  John.  The  annotations  of 
Dabney  removed  the  pre-existence  of  the  Saviour ; 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  99 

the  separate  existence  of  the  soul;  its  life  between 
death  and  the  resurrection  ;  the  devil,  Mah  allegori- 
cal   personage,  the   supposed    cause  of   all    evil;" 
the    punishment  of  the   wicked ;  the   angels ;  and 
the  great  judgment.      Norton    distinctly  stated  that 
if  a  philosopher  like    Cicero  had  been   convinced 
that    Christ  was  a  messenger  from  God,  and  had 
carefully  collected  and  committed  to  writing  all  the 
information   which  he    could    procure   concerning 
him   subjoining  his  own  explanations  and  remarks, 
"  the  work  of  such  a  writer  would,  as  far  as  we  can 
judge,  have  been  of  at  least  equal  value  with  any 
book  which  remains  to  us  of  the  New  Testament." 
The  Christian   Examiner  denied  that  the  epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  was  in  any  sense  canonical,  affirming 
that  the  author,  unable   to  "  distinguish  clearly  be- 
tween realities   and   figures,"   had   quite  mistaken 
the  manner  in  which   Jesus  "  sacrificed  himself  in 
the  cause  of  God  and  mankind."     It  described  the 
Apocalypse  as  a  kind  of  glorious  poem,  expressing 
"  the  approaching  advent  of  Christ,  and  the  triumph 
of  his  religion,"  and  "  not  prophetic  of  any  particu- 
lar transaction  ;  "  and  regarded  the  question,  wheth- 
er it  was  the  work  of  the  apostle  John  as  "  one  of 
the  nicest  in  sacred  criticism."      On  behalf  of  the 
body   of   Unitarians,  it  disclaimed    Universalism  ; 
yet  supposed  that  future  punishments    "must  be 
corrective  incentives  to   repentance   and   reform  ; " 
"  every  one  receiving  as  much   enjoyment  or  pain, 
and  for  such  a  length  of  time,  as   he  deserves  and 
needs  for   his  moral  improvement."     It  gloried  in 
the  belief  that  religious  truth  could  not  be  station- 


100      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

ary,  and  wished  that  the  orthodox  might  but  with- 
hold the  disputed  doctrines  from  their  children  till 
the  age  of  mature  judgment.  For,  "  it  looked 
upon  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of  hell  torments," 
especially,  "  as,  beyond  all  question,  the  most  hor- 
rible dogma  ever  conceived  or  uttered  by  man  ;  " 
and,  in  a  like  spirit,  Upham  of  Salem,  alluding  to 
the  fathers  of  New  England,  said,  that  "  there  was 
a  purity  and  sublimity  in  the  religion  of  the  un- 
taught Indian,  which  could  not  but  have  exerted  a 
corrective  and  restraining  influence  upon  the  com- 
plicated and  gloomy  doctrines  towards  which 
Christians  were  then  inclined." 

When  the  younger  Ware  was  called,  in  1830,  to 
the  chair  of  pastoral  theology  at  Cambridge,  he 
was  succeeded  in  the  Second  Church  by  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  the  son  of  that  Emerson,  who,  at 
the  head  of  the  First  Church,  had  heralded  the 
dawn  of  Unitarianism.  In  genius  and  splendor  of 
thought,  the  son  outstripped  the  father;  and  as  far 
as  the  father  had  advanced  before  his  orthodox 
progenitors,  so  far  his  simple  denial  of  orthodoxy 
was  succeeded  by  the  audacious  speculations  of 
his  son.  The  Christian  Examiner  of  1830  lament- 
ed the  injudicious  use  of  the  Old  Testament ; 
"  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  many  professed 
Christians  have  nothing  but  the  Hebrew  re- 
ligion ; "  and  would  have  it  read  as  containing 
the  record  of  the  Hebrew,  not  the  Christian 
faith,  and  fix  the  reverence  of  men  as  strongly 
as  possible  upon  the  gospels,  as  the  great  treasury 
of   our   religion."     The    energy   with    which    the 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND,  101 

champions  of  orthodoxy  had  charged  upon  the 
Unitarians  their  departure  from  the  faith  of  their 
fathers,  had  struggled  as  for  religion  itself  against 
its  adversaries,  had  questioned  the  legal  decision 
which  deprived  many  of  their  churches  of  corporate 
rights,  and  had  at  length  alluded  to  the  political 
claim  which  their  numbers  might  urge,  was  the 
occasion  of  fresh  alarm.  Year  after  year,  the 
learned  and  lucid,  but  too  ardent  Story,  had  ap- 
peared at  the  meetings  of  the  Unitarian  Associa- 
tion, and  had  a  little  tarnished  the  dignity  of  his 
ermine,  while  he  contended  there  for  religious  lib- 
erty, as  if  it  were  menaced  by  a  giant  enemy. 
The  chief-justice  of  Massachusetts,  too,  had  sus- 
tained, as  was  believed,  his  own  decision  through 
the  pages  of  a  Unitarian  publication.  Stung  by 
such  opposition,  Cooke,  an  orthodox  minister  of 
some  fire,  ventured  to  draw  the  eyes  of  the  com- 
munity to  the  immense  influence  in  political  affairs 
which  had  been  yielded  to  the  Unitarian  minority ; 
and  his  words  were  not  uttered  in  heedless  ears. 
A  more  commanding  advocate  appeared,  when 
Stuart  addressed  to  Channing  an  indignant  letter 
on  religious  liberty,  throwing  back  the  flood  of 
popular  innovation  and  invective.  Whitman  was 
forward  to  present  an  answer,  into  which  he  had 
gathered  the  scandal  of  villages  and  towns,  with 
little  discrimination  or  delicacy.  It  could  not  be 
hoped,  however,  that  the  liberal  conception  of  re- 
ligious freedom  could  be  satisfied,  till  the  orthodox 
should  yield  their  consent  to  a  fraternal  intercourse, 
which  would  have  been  but  a  falsehood  in  action. 
9 


102  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

The  Divinity  School  at  Cambridge  was,  in  1830, 
reorganized  ;  for  the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of 
Theological  Education  resigned  all  its  authority  to 
the  corporation.  Codman  and  a  few  others  op- 
posed the  statutes  which  so  effectually  engrafted  a 
faculty  of  Unitarian  divinity  upon  the  university, 
but  they  prevailed  by  a  vote  of  thirty-four  to 
twelve. 

It  was  a  perfectly  consistent  reference,  and  yet  it 
was  startling  to  hear  from  the  Christian  Examiner 
in  1831,  that  if  the  Trinitarian  doxology  were  "  not 
used  by  sincere  and  pious  men,  it  would  seem  to 
Unitarian  ears  very  like  blasphemy  and  polythe- 
ism. Against  the  argument  of  Joanna  Baillie, 
herself  an  Arian,  it  maintained  the  slightness  of.the 
difference  between  the  Arian  and  the  Humanita- 
rian. At  this  time,  Gannett  began  to  edit  the 
"  Scriptural  Interpreter,"  and  would  gladly  have 
stayed  that  boldness  in  which  the  spirit  of  doubt 
now  walked  abroad.  Leaning  as  far  towards  the 
substance  of  the  orthodox  hope  as  his  hereditary 
belief  would  permit,  and  often  employing  the  lan- 
guage which  was  most  familiar  to  serious  minds, 
the  younger  Ware  published  a  work  on  the  Chris- 
tian Character,  which  ran  rapidly  through  several 
editions.  It  was  reviewed  by  Adams,  in  "  Remarks 
on  the  Unitarian  Belief;"  but  the  wide  welcome 
by  which  it  was  met  was  a  token  of  the  deep  long- 
ing of  many  hearts  for  something  more  real  than 
negations,  and  more  inward  than  an  undistingui^h- 
ing  liberality.  All  over  the  land,  not  seldom  amidst 
strange  and  revolting  scenes  of  fanaticism,  the  fires 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  iUo 

of  spiritual  religion  had  been  rekindled  upon  thou- 
sands of  altars.  Men  asked  (or  a  faith  which  might 
relieve  the  guilty  conscience,  and  afford  the  sub- 
stantial assurance  of  peace  beyond  the  grave.  The 
old  Christianity,  if  it  had  its  wonders,  had  them 
because  it  spoke  of  such  things  as  without  it  would 
never  have  become  the  possession  of  the  intellect. 
The  new  Christianity,  which  labored  to  throw  aside 
all  wonders,  issued  in  the  profoundest  poverty,  ex- 
acting little  from  faith,  but  bestowing  less  in  return. 
Its  arguments  had  more  often  fixed  an  impression 
that  the  opposite  doctrines  were  unreasonable,  than 
a  conviction  that  they  were  unscriptural.  Minds 
aroused  to  a  solemn  earnestness,  and  turning  to  the 
word  of  God,  often  shook  oflfat  once  the  prejudices  of 
years,  and  submitted  without  hesitation  to  a  system 
which,  at  a  more  heedless  period,  they  had  been 
willing  to  disclaim.  Common  sense  revolted  at 
the  manner  in  which  the  Scriptures  were  now  com- 
pelled to  speak  or  to  be  silent.  The  imagination 
felt  itself  imprisoned  within  a  religion  of  cold  and 
barren  generalities.  The  heart  panted  to  see  once 
more  the  reconciling  cross,  and  the  incarnate  God. 
Gannett  and  Ware,  and  other  virtuous  men,  en- 
deavored to  answer  to  these  wants  as  well  as  they 
might ;  but  the  internal  power  of  Unitarianism  was 
found  to  be  insufficient  to  bind  those  together 
whom  chance,  rather  than  choice,  had  made  its 
adherents.  The  Trinitarian  congregations  swelled 
while  the  Unitarian  congregations  decayed  ;  and 
those  whom  they  lost  were  commonly  amongst  the 
more  earnest  of  their  members.     There  remained  a 


104      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

diminished  number  of  devout  persons,  who  had 
never  embraced  the  system,  but  were  not  persuaded 
nor  were  not  able,  to  leave  the  ancestral  temples  ; 
a  company  of  such  as  conscientiously  doubted  the 
exact  truth  of  orthodoxy,  but  wished  to  cling  to  the 
Scriptures;  a  few  who  delighted  in  bold  and  fanci- 
ful speculations,  and  had  little  reverence  for  the 
written  word ;  a  multitude  whose  minds  were 
afloat  on  the  billows  of  conjecture;  and  a  mass  of 
quiet  worldliness,  which  moved  on  without  desir- 
ing any  other  faith  than  that  which  tasked  least 
the  mind  and  the  life,  and  yet  promised  "  denique 
ccelum.%J 


CHAPTER    XIII. 


A  noble  victim  was  he  upon  whom  the  genius 
of  doubt  now  alighted,  bearing  him  aloft  as  with 
the  talons  of  an  eagle.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
was  the  lover  of  nature,  of  thought,  of  beauty,  and 
of  all  life.  His  style  is  the  pellucid  brook  that 
glides  and  ripples  and  smiles 

"  Through  wood  and  mead,  through  shade  and  sun." 

The  doctrines   of  revelation   had  long  since  been 
degraded  from  their  supremacy  ;  the  revelation  it- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  105 

self  had  of  late  been  cast  forth  as  a  prey  to  insin- 
cere criticism  or  to  eclectic  speculation.  Great 
doctors  of  Unitarianism  had  sought  in  the  human 
heart  the  standard  by  which  all  scriptural  disclo- 
sures should  be  tried  ;  had  taught  that  it  was  but 
needful  to  educate  and  develope  the  greatness  of 
that  inborn  image  of  divinity  in  man,  which  is 
truth  ;  that  he  could  be  essentially  what  Jesus  was  ; 
and  that  this  divine  image,  in  every  human  being, 
good  or  evil,  was  worthy  of  infinite  reverence,  of 
such  reverence  in  kind,  if  not  in  degree,  as  Unita- 
rianism paid  to  the  Son  of  God.  Emerson,  a  Pla- 
tonist,  gave  himself  to  this  inward  religion,  and 
cherished  this  divinity  of  humanity  ;  till  the  out- 
ward  gospel,  with  its  doctrines  and  its  ordinances, 
seemed  a  perishing  tabernacle,  ready  to  fall  around 
the  rising  spirit.  It  had  been  the  endeavor  of 
others  to  abroagte  all  the  special  honor  and  impor- 
tance of  the  sacraments.  They  were  represented 
as  no  more  than  other  acts  of  public  worship  ;  the 
gate  to  the  sanctuary  was  thrown  open  as  wide  as 
the  gate  of  the  outer  court ;  they  were  but  signifi- 
cant rites,  and  indeed  had  now  parted  with  most  of 
their  significance ;  and  still  the  people  came  not. 
Beyond  a  doubt,  in  the  judgment  of  Emerson, 
their  purpose  had  ceased  ;  and  he  now  proposed 
to  his  congregation  to  drop  the  celebration  of  the 
Lord's  Supper.  The  Second  Church  in  Boston 
was  unprepared  for  this;  and  its  pastor,  abandon- 
ing his  oilice,  preserved  his  integrity.  He  relin- 
quished Christianity  for  his  world  of  dreams  ;  made 
the  transcendental  philosophy  undeservedly  odious 
9* 


106  PAGES     FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

by  his  unbelief,  as  it  was  made  unjustly  ridiculous 
by  a  company  of  idle,  half-thinking  followers  ;  and 
after  a  few  years  was  the  brilliant  teacher  of  a  vast 
and  wicked  pantheism. 

The  Unitarian  pastors  were  alarmed  ;  and  the 
Unitarian  publications  strove  to  rebuild,  and  ral- 
lied to  what  remained  of  scriptural  belief.  In  the 
pages  of  the  Christian  Examiner,  Priestly  and  Bel- 
sham  were  sacrificed,  as  having  accomplished  their 
mission,  and  not  at  all  representing  the  present 
Unitarianism  of  America  or  of  England.  The 
Universalist  denial  of  all  retribution  was  again  at- 
tacked, even  by  Whitman,  and  disclaimed  by  the 
Examiner,  which  even  threw  out  a  few  words  to 
tell  that  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament  was  not 
wholly  without  authority.  Orthodoxy,  in  the  mean- 
while, was  in  peril  from  its  old  disease,  the  incli- 
nation to  hard  and  captious  metaphysics.  Like  a 
millstone  or  a  palsy,  the  strife  between  Taylor  of 
New  Haven,  and  his  opponents,  weighed  down 
their  common  cause ;  and  while  grave  theologians 
disputed  on  the  philosophy  of  a  revival,  men  slept, 
as  sleep  they  must,  amidst  such  discussions.  "  The 
Spirit  of  the  Pilgrims  "  died ;  the  division  took  a 
corporeal  shape  in  Connecticut;  clouds  gathered 
in  the  south,  and  around  the  head  of  Eeecher  at 
Cincinnati;  and  Unitarianism  pursued  its  way. 
Norton  published,  in  1833,  his  "  Statement  of  rea- 
sons for  not  believing  the  doctrines  of  Trinitarians." 
"  It  would  no  doubt  occur,"  he  said,  "to  thinking 
men  as  an  objection  to  a  publication  of  this  sort, 
that  the   doctrine   of  the    Trinity  was  now  to  be 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  107 

numbered  among  exploded  errors ;  that  it  was,  in 
truth,  altogether  an  obsolete  doctrine."  But  in 
offering  so  amazing  a  statement,  he  as  plainly- 
severed  himself  from  the  society  of  theologians, 
from  the  fellowship  of  Christians,  and  from  the 
tribunal  of  the  Scriptures.  For,  it  was  "  to  the 
great  body  of  enlightened  individuals  in  all  coun- 
tries, to  the  generality  of  those  who  on  every  sub- 
ject but  theology  are  the  guides  of  public  opinions," 
that  he  deemed  it  so  "  incongruous  to  address  an 
argument  against  the  Trinity  ;"  it  was,  he  owned, 
"  still  the  professed  faith  of  every  established 
church,  and  of  every  sect  which  made  a  creed  its 
bond  of  communion  ; "  and  he  maintained  that  as 
the  facts  were  essentially  incredible,  no  evidence 
could  be  sufficient.  Evidence,  indeed,  would  have 
been  idle  with  one  who  supposed  that  the  apostles 
had  mistaken  the  very  promise  of  the  second 
coming  of  their  Lord  ;  who  allowed  no  supernat- 
ural influence,  preserving  them  from  error ;  who 
said  that  "  supposing  that  Thomas  had  believed 
and  asserted  that  his  Master  was  God  himself,"  in 
the  presence  and  with  the  approving  benediction 
of  that  Master,  "  there  would  be  little  reason  for  re- 
lying upon  his  opinion  as  infallible."  A  writer  in 
the  Christian  Examiner  of  1834,  as  if  in  mockery 
of  all  confidence  in  the  scriptural  narrative,  at- 
tempted to  exclude  angels  from  the  history  of  the 
resurrection.  He  made  his  conjectures,  that  the 
soldiers  saw  "the  illustrious  Author  of  oar  religion," 
clothed  in  the  white  habiliments  of  the  tomb,  after 
his  resurrection,  and  reported  that  they  had  seen  an 


10S      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

angel ;  that  he  was  also  the  person  seen  by  the 
women,  and  that  they  imagined  the  white  cloth 
which  he  had  thrown  aside,  to  be  another  ;  that  the 
two  angels,  at  the  head  and  the  feet,  where  the 
body  had  lain,  were  the  two  parts  of  the  dress ;  and 
that  Jesus  found  and  put  on  the  clothes  of  the 
gardener,  which  caused  the  error  of  Mary  Magda- 
lene. Another  succession  of  articles  assailed  the 
authority  of  Moses  and  the  prophets.  Of  the  fall 
they  said,  "  it  may  be  that  facts  were  the  materials 
out  of  which  Moses  formed  his  pictures  ;  "  "  a  ser- 
pent may  have  eaten  of  the  apple  ;"  but  the  con- 
demnation of  the  serpent  was  deemed  but  "an  em- 
bellishment of  the  style."  They  relinquished  all 
prophecies  of  a  Messiah,  and  held  the  interpreta- 
tions of  the  apostles  to  be  erroneous.  "  That  Jesus 
was  the  Messiah,"  they  calmly  said,  "in  the  sense 
in  which  he  claimed  to  be  so,  we  are  far  from  dis- 
puting ; "  but  "the  language  of  the  prophets,  in 
the  sense  which  we  have  reason  to  suppose  that 
they  assigned  to  it,  gives  us  no  intimations  of  a 
suffering,  dying  Messiah,  or  one  who  should  rise 
from  the  dead,  and  no  clear  and  proper  predic- 
tions, which  were  fulfilled  in  Jesus  personally." 
With  a  confidence  which  seemed  as  if  it  would 
build  a  tower  to  heaven,  they  said,  "  we  deny  not 
only  that  there  are  three  persons  in  the  Godhead, 
and  but  one  God,  but  we  deny  entirely  the  possi- 
bility of  such  a  thing."  For  such  antagonists  it 
was  in  vain  that  Winslow  should  write  his  dis- 
courses on  the  Trinity,  and  it  would  have  been  in 
vain   that   an    apostle    or    an    angel    should   have 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  109 

written.  Cheever  wrote  also,  and  with  a  pen  of 
fire;  with  bold  directness  and  solemn  denuncia- 
tion ;  and  Withington,  in  the  Literary  and  Theo- 
logical Review,  with  admirable  keenness  exposed 
the  religious  barrenness  and  vacancy,  left  by  all  the 
speculative  eloquence  of  Channing. 

Amidst  all  the  progress  of  the  liberal  doctrine, 
its  more  earnest  adherents  could  not  but  feel  that  it 
was  neither  becoming  the  religion  of  the  mass,  nor 
even  securing  for  itself  a  lasting  establishment ; 
that  neither  for  the  many  nor  for  the  few  had  it 
reared  that  structure  of  enlightened  and  practical 
Christianity,  whose  foundations  it  had  long  since 
laid  with  anticipations  so  triumphant.  The  ortho- 
dox parishes  were  still  far  more  numerous,  and  far 
more  zealous.  Sects  had  penetrated  to  all  the 
more  populous  spots  ;  and,  when  the  attachment 
to  the  hereditary  place  of  worship  was  once  sup- 
planted, the  cool  and  refined  Unitarian  could  not 
well  maintain  the  contest,  among  plain  men, 
against  the  glowing  Methodist  on  one  side,  or  the 
downright  Universalist  on  the  other.  The  suspi- 
cion, too,  which  once,  when  it  withheld  the  Chris- 
tian name,  or  spoke  of  secret  infidelity,  had  been 
thrown  back  with  an  indignation  which  the  public 
mind  might  have  approved,  now  had  but  too  ap- 
parent a  sanction  from  the  writings  and  career  of 
individuals.  It  was  well  remembered  that  Unita- 
rianism  had  found  entrance,  not  by  open  attacks 
on  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  but  silently,  after  the 
authority  of  creeds  and  confessions  had  been 
shaken.     It  was  now  asked  whether  Deism  might 


110      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

not  enter  by  the  same  path,  not  openly  attacking 
the  divine  mission  of  Christ,  but  gliding  quietly 
even  into  the  pulpit,  and  into  the  chair  of  the  pro- 
fessor, after  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures  had 
been  overthrown.  There  was  no  libel  in  the  ques- 
tion ;  such  had  been  the  victory  of  doubt  in  other 
lands  ;  and  no  man  could  deny  that  it  was  a  natural 
and  easy  issue.  Amongst  the  Unitarians  there 
were  those  who  perceived  that  they  could  not  long 
preserve  the  character  of  a  Christian  sect,  except 
they  should  rally  firmly  around  some  positive 
truths,  and  either  recall  or  renounce  their  more  ad- 
venturous companions.  The  Christian  Examiner 
of  1835,  strove  to  resume  the  tone  of  the  believer  ; 
and  some  of  its  writers  delineated  the  Unitarian 
doctrine  as  only  what  no  doubt  it  was  in  the  minds 
of  many  of  the  Unitarian  congregations,  a  refusal 
to  acquiesce  in  the  orthodox  assertions  of  the  ab- 
solute deity  of  the  Son,  the  personality  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  the  inborn  corruption  of  nature,  and  the 
substitution  in  the  atonement.  But  all  who  united 
in  denying  the  Trinity  were  still  but  one  body  ; 
and  the  principle  of  doubt  was  the  moving  impulse 
from  the  begining.  A  strong  swimmer  may  resist 
the  current,  and  even  gain  the  land,  but  the  river 
sweeps  on. 

More  and  more  clearly,  in  the  sight  of  the  watch- 
ful observer,  the  Unitarian  party  mingled  within 
itself  three  classes,  bound  together  only  by  the  lie 
of  a  common  unbelief;  and  the  continuance  of 
their  union  was  a  proof  that  this  unbelief  was  no 
less  than  the  original  soul  of  the  party.     The  first 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  Ill 

class  was  composed  of  men  who  seriously  relied 
on  the  facts  of  the  gospel,  on  the  genera]  authority 
of  the  Bible,  and  on  the  full  reality  of  a  divine  re- 
velation ;  but  so  interpreted  all  as  to  escape  the 
doctrines  which  their  reason  persuaded  them  to  re- 
ject. The  second  class  denied  the  orthodox  doc- 
trines, but  leaned  firmly  on  nothing;  the  abler, 
opening  their  minds  to  light  from  every  side,  the 
feebler  following  the  abler;  while  no  book  of  the 
Scriptures,  no  conception  of  inspiration,  no  truth 
of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  was  deemed  secure  amidst 
the  progress  of  unchecked  inquiry.  The  third 
class  only  adhered  to  Unitarian  Christianity,  as  it 
was  that  Christianity  which  demanded  least;  and 
adhered  to  Christianity  at  all,  only  as  to  the  holiest 
of  all  the  forms,  in  which  "  the  divinity  within  " 
had  clothed  itself;  a  milder  Judaism,  a  purer  Ma- 
hometanism,  a  more  religious  Platonism.  The 
third  class  now  relinquished  the  miracles  of  the 
Scriptures  ;  many  of  the  second  knew  not  which 
to  sustain,  and  which  to  abandon  ;  while  the  first 
frowned,  but  frowned  gently  and  fraternally.  Dew- 
ey, who  seemed  to  hover  where  the  first  lost 
itself  in  the  second,  directed  the  Dudleian  Lecture, 
which  he  preached  in  1836,  against  the  opinion  of 
those  who  supposed  a  presumption  against  mira- 
cles. The  articles  in  the  Christian  Examiner  now 
bore  the  initials  of  their  writers ;  and  Ripley  con- 
tended through  its  pages  that  miracles,  which  he 
did  not  deny,  were  yet  not  a  support  on  which  re- 
ligion could  rely ;  affirming  that  the  miracles  re- 
corded  in  the   Bible  were  not  wrought  as  testimo- 


112      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

nies  to  truth,  but  as  incentives  to  action.  His 
conception  of  the  apostles,  too,  was  that  they  only 
possessed  in  a  larger  measure,  "  the  spontaneous 
inspiration  of  the  Spirit.*' 

The  Unitarian  doctrine  shut  out  its  professors 
from  fellowship  with  other  religious  bodies  in  the 
propagation  of  the  gospel.  They  were  too  few  to 
attempt  alone  any  extended  missions ;  and  their 
view  of  the  natural  state  of  mankind  was  not  such 
as  to  awaken  zealous  efforts  and  sacrifices  for  the 
heathen.  Even  in  their  pulpit  discourses,  the  al- 
most entire  absence  of  doctrine,  and  the  want  of 
confidence  in  the  statements  of  the  Scriptures,  left 
a  barrenness  which  fine  writing,  or  eloquence,  or 
sensibility,  could  hardly  make  fruitful.  To  vary 
the  tediousness  of  the  desk,  more  animating  topics, 
even  though  somewhat  secular,  were  presented ; 
and  the  age  produced  an  order  of  philanthropic 
movements,  in  which  the  ardor  for  good  deeds 
could  be  satisfied,  without  the  assertion  of  one  or 
another  religious  sentiment.  Channing  was  the 
philosopher  of  peace,  and  the  prophetic  arbiter  in 
the  great  moral  question  which  agitated  the  repub- 
lic. Pierpont  threw  himself  into  the  forlorn  hope 
of  the  onset  for  temperance  ;  and  with  a  gallant 
rashness  inflamed  against  himself  half  of  a  congre- 
gation, whose  craft  was  supposed  to  be  in  danger. 
May  was  a  leader  in  that  host  of  many  banners, 
which  marched  against  southern  slavery.  Unita- 
rians gave  their  patronage  to  the  improvement  of 
the  long  neglected  mariner  ;  Unitarians  were  fore- 
most in  lectures  and  lyceums ;  Unitarians  planted 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  113 

elegant  cemeteries;  Unitarians  pitied  the  blind,  the 
deaf,  the  maniac,  and  the  prisoner,  not  more  in- 
deed than  they  were  pitied  by  Christians  who  had 
creeds,  but  with  a  compassion  which,  because  it 
was  confined  to  temporal  sufferings,  seemed  there 
the  more  radiant  and  generous. 

In  1837,  the  translation  of  the  Prophets,  by 
Noyes  of  Petersham,  was  completed,  a  work  of 
more  ambition  than  ability ;  discussing  the  style  of 
the  Old  Testament  with  the  irreverence  of  an  un- 
believing critic,  and  so  explaining  the  predictions 
that  the  testimony  of  Jesus  should  not  be  the  spirit 
of  prophecy.  The  treatise  of  Norton  on  the  Gen- 
uineness of  the  Gospels,  the  fruit  of  many  years 
and  great  learning,  began  also  to  appear,  volume 
by  volume.  It  threw  aside  the  first  two  chapters 
of  Matthew ;  yet  seemed  to  admit  the  miraculous 
conception,  but  not  the  pre-existence  of  Christ; 
described  the  first  two  chapters  of  Luke  as  having 
"a  fabulous  hue;"  spoke  of  miracles  and  fictions 
as  blended  in  the  narrative,  of  the  errors  of  Mark 
and  the  mistakes  of  Luke  ;  rejected  the  accounts 
of  the  repentance  and  suicide  of  Judas,  of  the  res- 
urrection of  the  saints  at  Jerusalem,  and  of  the 
woman  taken  in  adultery  ;  suspected  the  mention 
of  the  angel  that  strengthened  Christ  in  his  agony, 
and  the  conclusion  of  the  gospel  of  John  ;  and  then 
ably  maintained  the  genuineness  of  the  residue,  as 
the  narratives  of  just,  honest,  and  credible,  but  by 
no  means  inspired  writers.  Furness  also  of  Phila- 
delphia produced  a  book  on  the  Four  Gospels, 
which  he  chose  afterwards  to  name  "  Jesus  and  his 
10 


114     PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 


Biographers."  Ripley  addressed  to  doubters,  Dis 
courses  on  the  Philosophy  of  Religion.  Follen, 
too,  that  admirable  German,  who  adorned  his 
adopted  land  by  his  genius  and  his  benevolence, 
wrote  on  religion  and  the  church ;  and  a  very  re- 
markable star  shot  up  the  horizon  of  letters.  This 
was  Orestes  A.  Brownson,  who,  having  once  been 
a  minister,  had  become  an  unbeliever ;  had  been 
recalled  by  the  writings  of  Channing,  and  re- 
entered the  pulpit,  with  scarcely  any  other  doc- 
trine, as  he  declared  at  a  later  period,  than  those  of 
"the  divinity  of  humanity,  and  the  brotherhood  of 
the  race  ; "  and  had  now  commenced  that  strange 
succession  of  transitions  in  which  he  passed,  al- 
ways startling  mankind,  always  complaining  that 
he  was  misunderstood,  always  bold,  logical,  inde- 
fatigable, down  to  the  surrender  of  his  office,  and 
even  to  a  fierce  assault  upon  the  church  and  the 
priesthood,  and  then  upward,  step  by  step,  to  a 
kind  of  orthodoxy  and  to  the  bosom  of  the  Church 
of  Rome.  He  now  issued  his  New  Views  of 
Christianity,  Society  and  the  Church,  which  were 
followed,  from  time  to  time,  by  other  new  views, 
till  he  required  a  quarterly  publication  of  his  own, 
to  be  the  chronicle  of  his  progress. 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND,  115 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

So  proudly  pantheistic  was  the  transcendentalism 
of  which  Emerson  was  the  head,  and  Ripley  no 
timid  representative,  that  the  younger  Ware  pre- 
pared a  sermon  for  the  College  Chapel,  on  the 
Personality  of  the  Deity;  which  was  printed  by 
the  request  of  the  students  in  divinity.  It  was 
probably  the  first  occasion  since  the  apostles  sepa- 
rated at  Jerusalem,  on  which  an  argument  on  such 
a  topic  had  been  offered  as  a  Christian  sermon. 
The  school,  with  its  mysticism,  was  not  daunted  ; 
and  in  1839,  Norton  appeared  as  its  opponent  ; 
appeared,  with  a  distinctness  and  a  vehemence 
which  told  how  one  may  be  willing  to  die  in  the 
last  ditch  who  has  himself  abandoned  every  other 
defence,  and  there  or  nowhere  must  fight  valiantly. 
The  title  of  his  discourse  was  "  The  Latest  Form 
of  Infidelity."  It  drew  from  Ripley  a  copious  re- 
ply, to  which  Norton  added  a  rejoinder.  The  Uni- 
tarian cause  could  not,  without  seeming  injustice, 
disown  the  offspring  which  it  had  borne  and  nour- 
ished ;  nor  could  the  zeal  of  Norton  convince  man- 
kind that  his  opinions  and  those  of  his  adversary 
were  as  widely  separated  as  infidelity  and  the  be- 
lief of  a  Christian.  The  exegetical  learning  of 
Cambridge  was  upheld  by  Palfrey,  through  his 
works  on  the  Old  Testament;  but  none,  except 
Norton,  rivalled  the  laborious  studies  of  Stuart  and 


116  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

his  associates  at  Andover.  Gannett,  in  a  sermon 
entitled  "  Unitarian  Christianity,  what  it  is,  and 
what  is  not,"  claimed  to  be  its  faithful  representa- 
tive ;  and  accordingly  Adams  addressed  to  him  a 
letter  on  his  Tract  on  the  Atonement.  Of  the  posi- 
tive creed  of  Unitarians,  as  it  was  elsewhere  given 
by  Gannett,  the  only  parts  which  are  peculiarly 
Christian,  are  these:  "  We  believe  in  the  divine 
mission  of  Jesus  Christ,  in  his  miracles,  his  perfect 
character,  his  authoritative  teaching,  his  voluntary 
death  and  his  triumphant  resurrection."  "  We  be- 
lieve in  the  authority  and  sufficiency  of  the  Scrip- 
tures in  respect  to  faith  and  practice."  A  "  spirit- 
ual judgment,"  and  "  the  importance  of  a  deep  and 
permanent  change  in  them  who  lead  vicious  or 
careless  lives,"  were  also  allowed  and  professed ; 
and  Unitarianism  would  bind  itself  to  nothing 
more. 

For  something  more,  however,  and  something 
more  kindling,  the  human  soul  would  long  with  a 
desire  which  at  times  was  irrepressible.  The  noble 
fruits  of  faith  were  not  seen  springing  up  beneath 
the  dews  of  a  doctrine  so  indefinite.  Transcend- 
entalism, with  all  its  weakness  and  excess,  was  in 
part  the  effort  of  more  thoughtful  minds  to  breathe 
into  their  system  a  more  inward  and  unworldly 
nature.  Its  writers,  with  a  peculiar  independence, 
described  the  barrenness  of  the  public  belief,  and 
emphatically  the  barrenness  of  Unitarianism.  The 
rural  church,  with  its  few  worshippers  ;  the  slender 
and  often  diminishing  company  at  the  sacramental 
table  ;  the  absorbing  love  of  wealth  and  of  the 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  117 

world,  which  reigned  amongst  the  busy  ;  the  indif- 
ference to  religion  and  its  institutions  amongst  the 
more  educated ;  the  want  of  power  to  penetrate, 
and  of  fire  to  enkindle  the  mass  ;  were  adduced 
even  in  testimony  that  the  day  for  these  forms  had 
passed,  and  that  religion  must  seek  new  life  from 
the  realm  of  transcendental  truth,  the  resplendent 
sun  within.  At  such  a  time,  Channing  was  called 
to  write  on  "the  Power  of  Unitarian  Christianity 
to  produce  an  enlightened  and  fervent  Piety."  His 
light  was  now  sinking  towards  the  west ;  and  as 
he  approached  the  eternal  world,  it  seemed  as  if  he 
would  grasp  more  firmly  what  remained  to  him  of 
the  faith,  and  vindicate  the  claim  of  Unitarianism 
to  those  Christian  honors  which  were  menaced 
alike  by  its  adversaries  and  its  children. 

Ripley,  in  the  meantime,  had  withdrawn  him- 
self so  far  into  the  inner  circle  of  speculation,  that 
a  Christian  parish  and  pulpit  could  no  longer  satisfy 
or  be  satisfied.  He  retired  to  a  kind  of  half  coeno- 
bite, half  socialist  community,  which  attempted  to 
form  its  spiritual  paradise,  not  in  some  "  deep  soli- 
tudes and  awful  cells,"  but  in  the  pleasant  town  of 
Roxbury,  fast  by  the  metropolis.  A  bolder  and 
more  successful  spirit  stood  there  at  their  side,  and 
shrunk  not  from  the  forms  of  the  parish  and  the 
pulpit.  Theodore  Parker  was  the  minister  of  the 
Second  Society  in  Roxbury.  At  the  ordination  of 
Shackford  at  South  Boston,  he  was  the  preacher; 
and  his  theme  was  the  Transient  and  the  Perma- 
nent in  Christianity.  He  feared  not  to  reject,  re- 
vile, and  blaspheme  whatever  is  supernatural  in 
10* 


118  PAGES    FROM    THE    ECCLESIASTICAL 

the  scriptural  history ;  regarding  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  a  pile  of  gorgeous  pictures,  the  New  as 
filled  with  mistaken  legends  and  opinions  which 
time  had  washed  away ;  and  Jesus  Christ  as  only 
such  a  person  as  others  might  be  and  yet  may  be, 
if  the  divinity  within  them  be  but  enough  revealed* 
The  congregation  listened  with  awe ;  the  elder 
Unitarian  pastors  looked  one  another  in  the  face  : 
but  the  earth  opened  not,  and  the  ordination  went 
on.  Boston,  however,  was  moved ;  the  public 
voice  demanded  from  Unitarianism  the  disavowal 
of  results  like  these.  But  freedom  and  progress 
had  been  from  the  beginning  the  watchwords  of 
the  liberal  party  ;  and  Parker  had  but  advanced 
beyond  his  brethren,  and  uttered  his  thoughts  with 
the  boldest  liberty.  They  had  ever  abhorred  and 
utterly  rejected  the  restraint  of  a  creed  ;  and  only 
by  a  creed,  however  general  it  were,  could  any  bar- 
rier be  placed  between  themselves  and  the  una- 
bashed scorner.  They  had  performed  with  him 
the  solemn  and  sacred  act  by  which  a  human  be- 
ing had  been  separated  for  the  ministration  of  the 
word  and  sacraments  ;  and  they  were  fettered  by 
their  own  custom  of  asking  no  questions  at  such  a 
season.  Some  members  of  the  ordaining  council 
disclaimed  through  the  press  all  fellowship  with 
the  doctrine  of  the  preacher.  But  the  lustre  which 
suiTounds  the  daring  of  unbelief  at  once  enveloped 
the  head  of  Parker ;  and,  before  a  cultivated  au- 
dience in  Boston,  he  unfolded,  more  at  length,  in 
a  succession  of  lectures,  his  sentiments  on  u  mat- 
ters pertaining  to  religion."     The  vastest  charity, 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  119 

the  wildest  indifference,  could  not  bestow  the  Christ- 
tian  name  upon  his  Theism  ;  and  at  length  the  as- 
sociation of  the  Unitarian  clergy  of  Boston  directly 
refused  him  the  usual  token  of  fellowship,  admis- 
sion to  their  pulpits.  They  were  denounced  by 
Parker  for  their  honorable  inconsistency  ;  and  one 
of  them  who  was  employed  as  a  minister  at  large, 
relinquished  his  place,  because  he  could  not  acqui- 
esce in  the  justice  of  the  exclusion;  while  another, 
who  had  gathered  a  peculiar  congregation  for  a  pe- 
culiar worship,  as  if  men  who  were  seeking  a  deep- 
er and  more  spiritual  life,  still  welcomed  the  mar- 
tyrs of  free  thought  to  his  assembly. 

In  1842,  a  letter  was  addressed  by  Brownson  to 
Channing  as  his  spiritual  father,  in  which  he  de- 
clared the  insufficiency,  for  the  heart  and  for  the 
truth,  of  a  religion  without  a  mediation,  and  plung- 
ed, in  his  own  manner  indeed,  into  the  depths  of 
the  ancient  doctrine.  It  was  almost  the  last  voice 
which  came  to  the  ear  of  Channing.  He  visited 
the  valleys  of  Berkshire,  and  it  was  at  Lenox,  on 
the  anniversary  of  West  Indian  emancipation,  that 
he  spoke  for  the  last  time  to  an  assembly  of  his 
fellow-men.  As  if  through  all  his  negations,  a 
gleam  from  the  heaven  of  truth  had  shot  in  at  sun- 
set, he  said  that  "  the  doctrine  of  the  Word  made 
flesh,  shows  us  God  uniting  himself  most  intimate- 
ly with  our  nature,  manifesting  himself  in  a  human 
form,  for  the  very  end  of  making  us  partakers  of 
his  own  perfection."  "  The  doctrine  of  grace,  as  it 
is  termed,"  he  said,  "reveals  the  Infinite  Father  im- 
parting his  Holy  Spirit,  the  best  gift  he  can   impart, 


120      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

to  the  humblest  human  being  who  implores  it."  In 
the  concluding  paragraph,  he  uttered  what,  as  a 
rhetorical  apostrophe,  would  be  almost  profane,  and 
as  a  prayer,  would  be  at  variance  with  the  efforts 
of  his  life,  "  Come,  Friend  and  Saviour  of  the  race, 
who  didst  shed  thy  blood  on  the  cross,  to  reconcile 
man  to  man,  and  earth  to  heaven !  "  A  few  days 
after,  he  died  at  Bennington. 

In  1843,  followed  the  death  of  the  younger  Ware 
and  of  Greenwood.  These  jewels  that  had  glitter- 
ed in  the  crown  of  liberal  religion  had  mostly  fallen 
from  their  places.  The  Bancrofts,  Thayers,  and 
Freemans  of  an  earlier  day  slept  with  their  fathers. 
Buckminster  and  Thacher  passed  away  in  their 
youth;  Kirkland  and  Cbanning  and  the  elder 
Ware,  after  lives  of  honored  service.  Follen 
perished  on  that  fearful  night,  when  the  frozen 
waters  of  Long  Island  gave  back  the  blaze  of  the 
Lexington.  Holley,  Greenwood,  the  younger 
Ware,  names  that  once  spoke  enchantment  or  con- 
solation, were  now  but  memorials  of  eloquence, 
taste,  and  pastoral  earnestness.  The  brilliant 
scholar,  the  accomplished  orator,  the  successful 
statesman,  the  dignified  chief  magistrate,  the  am- 
bassador whom  princes  and  universities  delighted 
to  honor,  had  almost  erased  the  recollection  that 
Everett  had  once  been  a  Unitarian  pastor.  Sparks 
had  occupied  his  best  years  in  raising  monuments 
to  the  worthies  of  his  country.  Palfrey,  too,  had 
withdrawn  from  the  pulpit  to  a  secular  office. 
Colman  became  a  popular  writer  and  lecturer  on 
ngriculture.     After  a   desolating   contest   with    an 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  121 

imbittered  people,  Pierpont  retired  from  the  capital. 
Emerson  had  relinquised  even  the  forms  and  lan- 
guage of  Christianity.  Brownson  was  a  member 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  communion.  Parker  was 
a  mere  unbeliever.  The  faith  of  Norton  seemed  to 
embrace  nothing  beyond  the  substantial  genuine- 
ness of  the  four  gospels,  as  uninspired  biographies 
of  a  holy  man  whom  no  prophet  had  foretold  and 
no  angel  had  attended.  But  Unitarian  pulpits 
were  still  occupied  by  men  of  scholarship  and  taste  ; 
and  it  was  not  easy  to  find  elsewhere  the  gorgeous 
diction  of  Dewey,  or  the  sustained  manliness  and 
feeling  of  Putnam.  The  Christian  Examiner  still 
pursued  its  way,  reconciling,  with  ability,  the  in- 
ternal contrasts  that  could  not  be  disguised ;  and 
pushing  the  practical  efforts  which  somewhat  bal- 
anced the  former  excess  of  negation,  and  gave  to 
Unitarianism  more  than  ever  an  air  of  religious  re- 
ality. 

About  one  hundred  and  thirty  Unitarian  congre- 
gations now  existed  in  Massachusetts.  When  the 
few  which  were  found  in  the  larger  towns  of  the 
neighboring  States  were  added  to  these,  the  whole 
number  might  rise  to  two  hundred.  Of  ninety-one 
religious  assemblies  in  Boston,  seventeen  were 
Unitarian,  four  were  Universalist,  one  was  com- 
posed of  Swedenborgians,  and  one  of  that  sect 
which  refuses  any  other  name  than  that  of  Chris- 
tian. In  all  the  others,  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy 
Ghost,  three  persons  and  one  God,  were  worship- 
ed and  glorified.  The  orthodox  churches  of  the 
Congregational  body  in  Boston  were  eleven  ;  in 


122      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

the  Commonwealth,  more  than  two  hundred  and 
fifty.  But  hardly  twenty  of  the  Unitarian  congre- 
gations in  Massachusetts  were  Unitarian  in  their 
origin.  In  all  the  rest,  the  founders  and  fathers 
had  adored  that  very  Trinity,  whose  Godhead  the 
children  denied. 

The  University  at  Cambridge  had  chiefly  Unita- 
rian professors,  fellows,  trustees  and  patrons.  It 
was  no  more  the  high  school  of  the  Common- 
wealth ;  it  had  pierced  the  very  bosom  of  that 
church  which  gave  it  life,  and  which  so  long  had 
nourished  it  in  the  hope  of  filial  gratitude  and  ser- 
vice. The  Divinity  School,  which  hung  to  it  like 
an  adopted  child  with  the  features  of  a  stranger,  was 
feeble  and  flighty;  but  sufficient  to  replenish  the 
narrow  domain  of  liberal  Christianity  with  its  an- 
nual refreshment.  Signs  were  not  wanting  of  the 
near  or  remote  approach  of  a  revolution  which  the 
will  of  the  people  could  at  any  election  of  their 
magistrates,  effect  with  ease  ;  and  the  stately  uni- 
versity bowed  her  head  to  more  than  one  sect  to 
propitiate  hands  which  were  able  to  strike  the  blow. 

It  was  now  a  common  saying  that  the  doctrinal 
system  of  Unitarianism  was  indefinable  and  form- 
less, because  it  prescribed  no  standard  of  agree- 
ment amongst  its  adherents.  The  besieger  might 
batter  down  the  common  wall ;  but  within,  as  at 
Sarragossa,  every  square  and  house  could  sustain 
the  contest  with  its  own  private  defences.  Time, 
however,  which  levels  all  things,  had  smoothed  the 
peculiarities  of  individual  belief,  and  the  outline  of 
ideal  Unitarianism,  of  that  Unitarianism  which  com- 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  123 

manded  the  assent  of  the  liberal  ministry,  was  not 
indistinctly  visible.  Parker  had  said,  and  said  in 
friendship  and  as  a  Unitarian,  and  without  reply, 
that  it  differed  from  the  Christianity  of  some  earlier 
ages,  more  than  Mahomet  from  the  Messiah.  It 
was  indeed,  if  it  were  viewed  as  a  form  of  Christi- 
tianity,  a  form  which  acknowledged  itself  to  be 
without  a  precedent.  It  abhorred  the  doctrines  of 
Luther  and  Calvin,  and  could  hardly  find  common 
sense  in  five  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles.  ]t  had  no 
fellowship  wiih  the  catholicity  of  the  middle  ages, 
when  the  centre  of  all  rites  and  formularies  was  still 
a  cross  that  had  a  meaning.  Except  in  a  single  de- 
nial, it  could  as  little  bear  the  society  of  Arius  as 
of  Athanasius.  It  could  not  deign  to  seek  its 
kindred  amongst  the  obscurer  sects  of  the  earlier 
times ;  with  Cerinthus  or  the  Ebionites.  It  ac- 
knowledged no  authority,  and  found  no  pleasure, 
in  the  theology  of  the  apostolic  epistles.  It  confid- 
ed in  no  predictions  of  the  prophets.  It  rejected 
the  primeval  history.  Its  honors  were  almost  con- 
fined to  the  chief  events  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  to 
his  discourses ;  and  as  it  doubted  all  the  narrative 
of  his  birth,  the  agency  of  angels,  the  existence  of 
evil  spirits,  and  the  accuracy  of  the  recollection  of 
the  writers  wherever  it  could  have  desired  that  they 
might  have  erred,  even  this  inmost  oracle  returned 
an  uncertain  answer.  But  the  sole  standard,  the 
tribunal  of  appeal,  to  which  the  faith  of  the  Unitari- 
an body  promised  allegiance,  was  the  record  of  the 
example  and  instructions  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  so 
far  as  these  had  been  correctly  understood,  remem. 


124      PAGES  FROM  THE  ECCLESIASTICAL 

bered  and  reported  by  the  evangelists  and  their  in- 
formers. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Unitarian  ministry  affirmed 
that  Jesus  was  a  teacher  divinely  appointed  ;  that 
he  wielded  a  control  over  external  nature ;  that,  at 
the  close  of  a  spotless  life,  he  sealed  his  mission 
with  his  blood  ;  and  that  he  re-appeared  on  the  third 
day  after  his  crucifixion,  as  a  pledge  of  human  im- 
mortality. It  affirmed  no  more.  It  denied  not, 
indeed,  all  which  its  followers  neither  taught  nor  be- 
lieved. Such  of  them  as  cared  to  preserve  one,  or 
another,  or  even  a  considerable  mass  of  the  ancient 
doctrine  of  the  universal  church,  were  left  to  their 
private  liberty,  with  even  more  indulgence  than 
such  as  denied  the  miracles  themselves,  or  doubt- 
ed the  perfection  of  the  character  of  Jesus.  The 
one  bond  of  union  amongst  the  liberal  teachers 
was  the  denial  of  a  threefold  distinction  in  the  God- 
head. But  as  a  body  of  men,  they  believed  neither 
the  personal  existence  of  the  Son  of  God  before 
his  incarnation,  nor,  of  course,  his  personal  incarna- 
tion itself;  neither  that  the  prophets  had  predicted 
a  Messiah,  nor,  of  course,  that  he  was  the  predicted 
Messiah  ;  neither  the  fall  of  man  through  the  temp- 
tation of  the  serpent,  nor  that  he  was  that  seed  of 
the  woman  who  was  to  bruise  the  head  of  the  ser- 
pent. They  derided  the  hereditary  corruption  of 
nature.  They  denied  the  necessity  of  a  Mediator. 
They  could  not  find  words  to  utter  their  detestation 
of  the  thought  of  a  Redeemer,  who  should  be  a 
substitute  and  a  propitiation.  They  rejected  every 
mysterious  dependence  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins  on 


HISTORY    OF    NEW    ENGLAND.  125 

the  blood  of  the  atonement.  They  knew  of  no 
Holy  Spirit,  beyond  a  stronger  and  more  sustained 
action  of  the  universal  power  which  dwells  in  in- 
tellectual beings,  and  is  divinity  in  man.  They  as- 
cribed no  inspiration  and  no  decisive  authority  to 
the  writers  of  the  Old  or  the  New  Testament.  They 
acknowledged  in  the  sacraments  no  special  sacred- 
ness,  significance  or  efficacy.  They  smiled  at  the 
transmitted  claims  of  any  or  every  church  and  min- 
istry. They  doubted  the  assistance  and  the  exis- 
tence of  angels;  they  disbelieved  the  hostility  and 
the  existence  of  devils.  They  relinquished  the  in- 
termediate state  of  the  soul,  and  the  resurrection  of 
the  body.  They  deemed  the  second  advent  and 
the  judgment,  figures  of  rhetoric.  They  extended 
the  grasp  of  cordial  fellowship  to  the  sect  which  de- 
clares the  just  and  the  unjust,  blessed  alike  in  death  ; 
and  they  expressly  denied  all  infliction  in  the  life  to 
come,  except  such  as  a  gracious  Father  may  em- 
ploy for  the  recovery  of  his  erring  children.  Of  all 
the  doctrines  which  distinguish  the  Christian  reli- 
gion, there  remained  only  the  divine  mission  of 
Jesus.  His  exercise  of  miraculous  power,  and  his 
resurrection  were  facts  of  history.  About  these  two 
facts  and  this  one  doctrine  men  lingered,  as  if 
around  two  majestic  columns,  sustaining  a  broken 
architrave,  the  only  fragments  of  some  once  perfect 
and  resplendent  temple.  At  length  the  spirit  of 
improvement  prompted  the  question,  whether  the 
ground  should  not  be  cleared,  that  it  might  be  the 
site  of  a  new  and  nobler  edifice.  The  answer  was 
11 


126  PAGES,    &C. 

heard  from  the  spade  and  the  pickaxe  of  transcen- 
dental impiety. 

So,  through  the  passage  of  a  century,  doubt  had 
struggled,  and  conquered,  and  prevailed.  It  began 
with  silence  on  some  of  the  more  mysterious  doc- 
trines of  Christianity  ;  it  ended  with  a  denial  of  all 
its  doctrines  save  one.  It  began  with  an  appeal 
from  human  creeds  to  the  simple  language  of  inspi- 
ration ;  it  ended  with  denying  the  inspiration,  and 
discarding  ihe  language.  At  first,  infusing  itself 
into  upright  minds,  with  the  air  of  scriptural  in- 
quiry, it  caused  a  theological  mistake  ;  then,  spread- 
ing the  shining  mist  of  liberality  over  the  cold,  the 
vain,  the  worldly,  the  timid,  the  presumptuous,  it 
nourished  a  stupendous  heresy  ;  and  finally,  forcing 
a  bolder  order  of  thinkers  back  upon  themselves,  it 
issued  in  a  wilderness  of  popular  unbelief.  But 
the  spirit  which  loves  to  doubt  can  but  depart,  by 
its  very  nature,  farther  and  farther  from  the  high  re- 
gions of  celestial  faith.  He  who  sees  the  flakes  of 
snow  gathering  along  the  tide  of  the  humblest  Al- 
pine brook,  well  knows  that,  though  kingdoms  lie 
between,  they  must  descend  till  they  reach  the  sea. 


LIST  OF   TRACTS 

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%M^- 


